Uninformed opinion would be they are holding back until needed if things need to escalate in the Ukraine or with the west. I wouldn't assume it's some sign of weakness.
a very good technology that the Soviet Union developed which punches above its weight in situations like the Ukraine war because the mobile radars are hard to suppress with these methods
I have seen a huge number of Buks in various conditions in video footage from the war, one of them was scurrying around the 'suburban' areas of Kiev. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the early missile hits on residential buildings were something like this that failed to lock on
on paper those are better than the Buk but Ukraine doesn't have so many and I think the Buk is a "cheap and cheerful" convivial weapon like the AK-47 that does great when exported.
(Both the Buk and S-300 are a lot like the US Patriot missile system in that they are comprised of a number of mobile units such as command posts, radar, missile launchers, etc. The Buk however has a configuration where the radar and missile launcher are colocated on the same vehicle and I'd guess that configuration works really well under rough conditions with less trained crews.)
Some of the residential hits seemed to be cruise missiles that weren't aware that a building was in their path.
A case of the height map not being updated correctly in the computer's memory? The Russians seem to be sloppy all over the place, so it wouldn't surprise me.
All this lightens my mood, since it's obvious the Russians wouldn't last two months against NATO forces.
The expert they are quoting is a pretty well known figure, who has been saying lots of things often not aligned with media retoric.
To borrow his twitter bio as an introduction
> PhD student @warstudies (Department of War Studies at Kings College). Senior Fellow @FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Institute). Previously @USMC (US Marine Corp), @ColumbiaSIPA (Columbia School of International and Public Affairs), @CentreAST (Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies), and @AlfaFellowship. Focused on Russian defense policy.
To imply that they're just pulling in random people is flat out wrong. This is a person who has been studying Russia from a military standpoint for many years.
You can nearly always find a qualified individual who already is saying what you want said, just needing a microphone to say it louder or at the right time. That's how expert witnesses tend to work for instance.
I don't see why an official would publicly broadcast active wartime capabilities and tactics that might not be known.
And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent. There's an active war. If history has taught us anything, psyops is as sure as death, in war.
> I don't see why an official would publicly broadcast active wartime capabilities and tactics that might not be known.
That explains the anonymous officials not agreeing with this stance. That doesn't explain the non-government experts not agreeing that this is the reason though. They don't have any special knowledge and wouldn't be telling the Russians anything they didn't already know.
> And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent
There's probably a degree of this, but from what I've seen it also seems to be legitimately the case that they are somewhat incompetent.
Besides which, the Russian's letting that psyop succeed, would itself be direct evidence of incompetence.
Re: psyops, Russia has many of the same weaknesses as China, in that their practitioners cannot conceive of an independent, actively contradicting and adversarial infosphere.
Inside Russia or China, psyops is muting whoever says something you don't like, and deciding on and disseminating the message of the day.
Outside of Russia or China, that looks very different, with everyone opining on your message whenever they feel like it, in addition to virality being a huge component of message reach. That's a very different skillset to navigate successfully.
I don't see how that's a sign of incompetence, rather than a sign of aging military equipment. Incompetence would be relaying important, uncoded, information over an unencrypted signal, in a way that would result in some disadvantage.
For example, saying "shoot here" then having a tank round go through the wall 5 seconds later wouldn't benefit from encryption.
> For example, saying "shoot here" then having a tank round go through the wall 5 seconds later wouldn't benefit from encryption
Of course it would. Otherwise:
* the enemy could analyse your strategy and tactics and predict your approach; and worse:
* the enemy can impersonate command, say "approach through there" and have the tank go through an anti-tank ditch
There's no excuse for unencrypted military communications. One would think the Russians would have learned their lesson from freaking Tannenberg a century ago, but it seems not.
> the enemy could analyse your strategy and tactics and predict your approach; and worse
Encryption won't encrypt the shell going through the wall, which could just as easily be analyzed with the constellation of spy satellites focused on the region.
> the enemy can impersonate command, say "approach through there" and have the tank go through an anti-tank ditch
This would be uncoded communications that would put them at a disadvantage. If that did happen, then yes it would be incompetence. Is there any evidence that this is happening? I find it unlikely that they would believe any voice coming over the line, considering what you're saying is an "attack vector" that has been present and known for, literally, the last 131 years.
Do you have anything that supports this very negative view of the intelligence of the average Russian soldier/commander?
i don't believe GP was specifically impugning the intelligence of the average Russian soldier/commander, more commenting on the apparently high displayed level of incompetence shown in the field so far (of which the use of wide-open unencrypted HF radio comms with basic tone squelch/CTCSS at the company<->battalion<->brigade level is just one example).
it was not a critique of intelligence, if anything it was a critique pointing out the failure of high-level RU military planners. what kind of competent general staff lets [at least some] of their battalion-and-below radio comms go out into open frequencies that are easily listened to, transmitted on and also easily jammed by consumer-grade cheap chinese radios?
> what kind of competent general staff lets [at least some] of their battalion-and-below radio comms go out into open frequencies that are easily listened to
One that is part of a military that has old radio equipment (maybe from competently allocating funding to something more important), so they have no other choice. I'm sorry, but that doesn't require incompetence. Incompetence would be if they let it unexpectedly impact their invasion. Competence for an invasion doesn't require encryption (see Crimea). An encrypted radio channel makes things easier, but it may not be required for the invasion of Ukraine, which is the context here.
The definition of competence:
the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.
The purpose of this war isn't to unlock all achievements with a high score, it's to take Ukraine. They're still progressively taking Ukraine, and they've only sent in 1/3 of the forces from the border (last numbers I saw).
>
And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent.
It's not a strong possibility, it's a 100% guarantee.
Aside from big, trivially disproven announcements ("This side now controls such and such city"), you're not going to see an accurate picture of literally anything in this conflict until months, if not years after the fact, when historians will pour over, and fit together first-hand accounts and records.
In the meantime, parts of the picture may be accurate, but nobody here has any idea which parts are true, which are propaganda, or what particular purpose that propaganda serves.
> And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent.
Definitely. You're not going to hear about the encounters where the Russians smoke the Ukrainians and they have serious loss of life/equipment or don't come back at all.
Not that there's not a lot of organic sentiment around the world, but Ukraine seems to have a very good PR corps pushing news of their victories and memes about the situation. And unlike a lot of these attempts, they aren't "how do you do fellow kids" type shit where it's super obvious.
Exhibit A: the Ghost of Kiev. Regardless of whether he exists or not, he's a great case study in propaganda.
FTA: the issue is that Russia made a huge show of force at the start of the invasion but has apparently held back from actually using much of it (by air or ground). This war could have been over the day it started if Russia had used maximal force, and the conservative approach their actually using maximizes risks and casualties.
And that's what has the experts confused: they can't figure out why Russia is going with this strategy, given the overwhelming technological and numerical superiority of the invasion force and their apparent willingness to accept casualties as the cost of conquering Ukraine.
It doesn't appear to be cost, because the invasion has "cost" Russia hundreds of billions.
It doesn't appear to be casualties/morale, because Russia has suffered 500+ casualties in 3 days (its worst losses since Afghanistan), and is still invading.
It doesn't appear to be doctrine, because their actions don't match what is known of Russian ground or air doctrine.
And so experts are trying to figure out what calculus went into Russia's invasion planning (assuming there was a coherent strategy going in, which is not a given in the post-Trump world).
I don't really care if it's the editor or the author - it's part of the article. Similarly, I don't care if it's served up over HTTP1 or HTTP2, it's irrelevant to the content of the document served up.
which can use ammunition at an absolutely insane rate. It takes time to move this stuff into place and more time to take the ammunition in, set up resupply paths, etc.
So Russia attacks Kiev with a small force with light weapons, some Spetsnaz, mostly to keep the fight away from the main body of the force which will strike hard when it is ready.
The problem with this take is Kyiv is more or less Russian Jerusalem. That’s one important difference from all other… special operations performed by Putin.
I don't understand why people just don't believe Russia is being literal with their intentions. They said multiple times they don't want Ukraine, they just don't want NATO to be able to invade them by land.
I'd you assume this is true, what they are doing make complete sense.
> I don't understand why people just don't believe Russia is being literal with their intentions
They are.
You are just listening to the wrong articulation of their intentions.
> They said multiple times they don't want Ukraine,
They have said multiple times that they do want Ukraine, view it's separation from Russia as a crime against Russia and Russians committed by those in the past with control over Russia in the form of the Soviet Union, and Russian state media even released than silently deleted a premature victory announcement for the current invasion declaring the establishment of a new union state of all the Russias (Russia [Great Russia], Ukraine [Little Russia]< and Belarus.)
Now, that's not what they emphasize to the international community, but they have been saying it.
* Russian state media even released than silently deleted a premature victory announcement for the current invasion declaring the establishment of a new union state of all the Russias (Russia [Great Russia], Ukraine [Little Russia]< and Belarus.)*
> A Russian state-run news agency prematurely published an article that said Russia has taken back Ukraine.
> "Ukraine has returned to Russia," said the article, which ran on RIA Novosti and has since been taken down. "The West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe."
The full text is even better. Talks about "solving the Ukrainian question" which sounds like a direct reference to Hitler's "Final Solution to Jew Question" or whatever that was called.
> Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov emerged from the nearly eight hours of talks and declared, "There are no plans or intentions to attack Ukraine." He went on to say, "There is no reason to fear some kind of escalatory scenario."
That was, quite clearly, a lie, as they'd already massed 100,000 troops near Ukraine.
Except for when they said they were going to "show them real decommunization", kill everyone in government, that it didn't deserve to be a country and they should reform the Russian Empire, sure.
It seems that whether this succeeds or fails it'll actually increase their land borders with NATO.
I guess you also missed Putin characterising Lenin's actions post-revolution as a mistake, and that the Russian Empire should move back to its pre-USSR borders? Or the prepared article that was mistakenly published crowing about the "final solution to the Ukrainian problem"?
Your selection of what to believe as the honest truth is pretty telling.
Because there is a plethora of reasons given that you can choose from.
Denazification of the jewish russian speaking president.
Lawrow: Ukraine wants to aquire nukes and russia must prevent this. Propably trolling.
Half hearted false flags operations: Bombed car where the suspect was arrested the day before. Bombed out building with months old trees in it....
The aforementioned NATO ambitions of ukraine. ukraine was denied membership 14 years ago and things look even more impossible now with the territorial conflict about the crimea. Paradoxically russia is making ukraines medium term NATO membership more likely by solving the crimea conflict.
Russia wants to unite all Rus and everything else is just a smokescreen. Putin has given some rather 19th century speeches to that effect and there was this article that was published and then quickly taken down in some state owned newspaper (i think) https://thefrontierpost.com/the-new-world-order/
Pretty scary stuff.
>And so experts are trying to figure out what calculus went into Russia's invasion planning (assuming there was a coherent strategy going in, which is not a given in the post-Trump world).
Because there was a much greater absence of incoherent strategies by political and military leaders in the world prior to Trump being president of one specific country? No real fan of the man but the need to cram in a Trump-hate reference for nearly any context sometimes becomes absurd.
The difference is that Putin has previously accomplished himself as a competent military leader, and Hitler had not.
Though you are right in that there are huge similarities between the two campaigns: in both cases, it appears that the executive leader ignored the advice of his military advisors to launch disastrous military campaigns that actually ended up hindering the non-military objectives behind those campaigns.
> The difference is that Putin has previously accomplished himself as a competent military leader, and Hitler had not
What? Putin managed to force his vastly overwhelming forces on small countries with small and badly equipped armies like Chechnya, Syria, Georgia. And we don't know how much does he really do.
Hitler presided over, and even helped with the planning of, one of the most brilliant campaigns against overwhelming forces ( the invasion of Benelux and France). His army had tremendous luck, the French were thoroughly incompetent and prepared for all the wrong things, but still, it was a massive military success which was at least partly due to Hitler. That's how he got it in his head he's a brilliant strategist, which really went to his head after the initial Soviet counterattack ( when his orders were successful), and the rest is history.
I have to agree with this, by what logic has Putin established himself as a brilliant military strategist in contrast to what Hitler’s government had accomplished by 1941?
Agreed with the above comments about Putin definitively not having established himself as a competent military leader so far (and especially at the present time with this fiasco of a military invasion, again, so far).
But that aside, my original comment, despite having been downvoted, doesn't seem at all off base: Why in the world even bother to mention Trump except out of pure kneejerk emotional need in the context of unsound military leadership on the world stage. Poor invasion planning certainly existed long before he became president of the U.S. and the current disaster essentially has nothing to do with him or his lack/presence of military leadership skills.
There's a consideration that Russia wants to actually minimize civilian deaths, because unlike Syria, territories of Ukraine will never stop neighbouring Russia. Different pieces of doctrine may apply.
But I'm not sure how it maps to observable absense of air force. Prolonging the conflict will obviously cause more civilian deaths and suffering.
It will be interesting to discover in the future if we find out a large number of things like planes were not available for the operation because their commanders ensured they were broken when the invasion occurred. Attacking the nation next door that speaks roughly your same language makes things like mutiny a larger risk.
>It doesn't appear to be casualties/morale, because Russia has suffered 500+ casualties in 3 days (its worst losses since Afghanistan), and is still invading.
Conservative western intelligence estimates actually have this number at over 2000 this morning (3/1) [0]. They are losing whole battalions by the day, and the real nasty urban warfare hasn't even begun. It's an absolute bloodbath that would never even conceivably be tolerated for a moment by any other modern military on earth.
Because this isn't the intended strategy, but rather then resultant strategy.
Modern Russia seems to suffer from the same weaknesses as the USSR: garbage-in, garbage-out. If you staff an entire bureaucracy (including your military command structure) with Yes-Men, you get "Yes" responses.
When the question is "Are we prepared for the invasion?"
When the question is "Will we be able to supply our ground forces?"
When the question is "Will we be able to achieve air superiority rapidly?"
And because that's how hierarchies work, you believe the "Yes" you hear. And make your strategic plans on the basis of it being true.
Consequently, Russia appears to have built an entire invasion plan on a not-insignificant number of lies about their own forces, as communicated by their own mid-level leadership.
Imho, that explains things pretty simply and fully.
Yes, that appears to be the growing consensus among experts.
But the reason for the "confusion" (the "stumped" in the title) is that Russia has not historically operated this way under Putin (though it did operate this way under his predecessor). Basically, nothing is happening the way it has happened before (under Putin), and this appears to be a "new normal" (under Putin).
I think this could be a large part of it. Putin's Russia is rife with corruption and cronyism. Those two things can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of a military.
To start with, the yes-men problem means significant bad news is often buried not dealt with. It also results in the people who are the best at bs'ing and political manuevering being the ones who rise in the ranks. Your officer corps ends up being filled with people who did not optimize for military competency. Indeed General Shogyu, the Russian Minister of Defense, actually doesn't have a military background.
The corruption comes in with logisitical support. With significant levels of corruption you'll find that the amount of parts, munitions, fuel are not what you thought they were. Then you'll also probably have problems with the condition of the stuff you do have.
All of those things damage morale, competency, readiness, you name it. So when you actually have to go to war, you might find drastic shortfalls in battlefield performance.
If Russia did mass killings / carpet bombing / total war, it hands justification of the west for full counterattack and occupation of Ukraine.
Putin assumed all of Ukraine would roll over like Crimea. He has underestimated the people of Ukraine.
He attacked in winter assuming it would be over in two days. Now his already-low-morale forces face winter. I don't care if they are equipped and Russian and "used to war". This won't be WWI where you can build bunkers and hide in there. If you occupy a house, the local populace will email someone and you'll be a target of portable missile infantry.
He doesn't seem to have a plan B.
In theory, with good arms supply from the West (which is RIGHT OVER THE BORDER, this isn't Afghanistan that is 5000 miles away), the Ukrainian populace will get progressively better armed, more experienced (this is probably resulting in the training of a million or more Ukrainians to be effective soldiers), and more motivated.
If I were the US/NATO, I would be training and equipping as many Ukrainians as want it, and there should be millions of willing soldiers. This is the opportunity to produce a very dangerous military power right across the border from Russia. You get to breathe down the neck of the Belarus puppet strongman. And it might destroy Putin's regime by weakening him.
Putin also seems to have underestimated how much Ukraine hates him personally. I know no Ukrainians, but I suspect they are sick and tired of him threatening him and are spoiling for a fight.
The danger to Putin is that the US could equip and train and season a millions-strong Ukrainian army that sees a very unmotivated Russian army, repulses them, and then counter invades Russia. Now that is unlikely given nuclear deterrent and the like, but it is within the realm of possibility, especially if elements of Russia's army hint they are amenable to regime change and will refuse to nuke.
Modern nuclear war doesn’t work that way. Commanders are progressively passed the order to nuke the same target until someone does. That’s why there’s so many of them, it’s a numbers game. Also it’s not all or nothing, at the start it’s tit for tat and hope you aren’t either!
> Putin also seems to have underestimated how much Ukraine hates him personally.
I doubt it's personal. Russia has dominated Ukraine over the centuries. Stories of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis in WWII are true enough; but at the time, Ukraine was ruled by Russia, which only a decade previously had imposed a famine on Ukraine that killed millions. Unsurprisingly, many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis as liberators.
Depends on what you mean by experts. The strategist I know said this is a political decision. They don't want to inflict too much damage to avoid bloody insurrections in the future. Russian aircrafts are not that precise. What is more, UA army received manpads. It's not worth it.
MANPADs are only effective at very low altitudes (AGL), fundamentally due to the inability to put much propulsion on a rocket intended to be carried by hand. Su-27s, Su-34s, and Su-35s should fly significantly higher than this altitude during strike and interdiction missions, but doing so exposes them to radar-guided SAM systems like the aforementioned Buk (SA-11 / SA-17) or S-300 (SA-10 / SA-12 / SA-20).
You can see on some clips how low there were flying - well within the range of manpads. As I said, it could be because they don't have a good high precision munitions.
Have you seen what they have done to Mariupol and Kharkiv the last few days? Maybe this was the original plan, but with that botched there seems to be no consideration for damage to civilians.
I don't see how that excuses their failure to achieve air superiority. The Ukrainian Air Force still manages to fly manned and unmanned missions and harass Russian equipment and logistics.
There are many possible explanations, so latching onto the first one that sounds plausible is not necessarily the correct one. Otherwise, we would all be like those pundits on TV.
Several reasons might also be simultaneously true. Some simple examples: Russia might be testing NATO. Russia might not want to escalate in certain ways. There have been many countries whose leaders want to minimize the numbers they kill, while still killing many people. Russia might not want to reveal otherwise unknown capabilities. They might be preparing their air to strike elsewhere, possibly unrelated to Ukraine. There might be a revolt inside Russia's military. And so forth. But, what's likely? Maybe they just don't want to kill everyone or create dissent.
It wouldn't be unhelpful to increase the sortie rate of Baltic air policing missions and extend them over the Finnish border (with Finnish permission).
Potentially hostile assets require matching defensive stationing, even if they aren't doing anything aggressive. Fighters in Murmansk / Severomorsk aren't in Ukraine.
The explanation which I have not seen discussed here is that this is a secret war, in Russia.
Putin called it a "special operation." Use of the term "war" in reference to this action has been banned in Russia. This secret war aspect may have had practical effects on command and control. It is possible that by not declaring this more than a limited special action, Putin's deployment options are actually limited.
I always wonder how they developed things like that in the 70s. Right now I don’t know a single engineer that could even know how to begin to develop a system like that. I feel like most of them would try and throw a neural net at the problem and call it a day.
You may be exaggerating but there is some truth in it, and it applies to many areas of science. The growing specialization means your knowledge is deeper but lest vast. For many classes of problems you just use a pre-built solution as this is the easiest and most common way. But rest assured, the people who work on defense system know very well what they are doing.
Something in that vein that has always amazed me, even though its performance in the field left something to be desired, is the Norden bombsight [0].
"The Norden [used] an analog computer that continuously recalculated the bomb's impact point based on changing flight conditions, and an autopilot that reacted quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects."
Spacecraft often use stars to orient themselves. The Voyager spacecraft have star trackers to keep the antenna pointing at Earth. They look for the Canopus star.
I guess if they can confirm that it is a specific star they know where on a I finite line they are. If that line happens to be through earth and the space craft they know where to point their antenna.
GPS and celnav (and other forms of navigation, radio or otherwise) are really not so different when you get down to fundamentals. At their core they are all about locating the intersection of multiple lines, circles, or spheres of position, depending on how many dimensions you're working with. The major differences are in how you come up with the LOPs.
The odd man out, if you will, is inertial nav, which has more in common with dead reckoning.
I'm guessing most mechanical and/or ECE programs still teach "control systems", and that might be where one begins, along with some "signals and systems" and RF classes.
I suspect that the engineers you know are more computer science "engineers" than people who went through a traditional engineering core.
The ABET mechanical and electrical engineering curricula combined would give you all the skills a team needed (perhaps with the aid of a physicist and chemist or two) to build this system.
That we have dissolved the word "engineer" to mean "ad salesman at scale" doesn't mean the traditional engineers aren't out there.
I'm teaching in an ABET accredited program using MIT textbooks and I'm not impressed. If engineers want to avoid learning how to integrate by parts or use the chain rule it seems like a great idea. Arubis' comment above seems on point.
Are you saying that the current program lets them avoid learning those things, or that they should be allowed to avoid learning them?
I'm not sure I've seen a calculus course that skipped those (granted, it's been more than a decade since I looked at calculus courses). They certainly seem to still be within the remit of the FE - ECE exam.
I don't think this is a new problem. Its largely a problem of the way its taught, particularly at the high-school level where professional teachers and politicians choose what is important in the curriculum (and yes, I know a lot of engineering programs require an "engineering calculus" taught at the college). Nothing has changed since Feynman's little rant, if anything looking at my kids schooling its worse than ~30 years ago when I was in HS. Although, i'm told I can't compare my HS education because I went to one of the best HS's for math/science in the country (one of first of what are now called "STEM magnets" long before that term was even coined) at the time.
But even so, my calc for engineering classes suffered from basically the same problems of focus. It was frequently hard to tell what was really important vs what was an interesting sidetrack I would never use again. Which is why I distinctly remember a number of my engineering classes having week long math refreshers as the first week of class for things like Laplace transforms/etc or a math refresher TA lead study groups the prof would strongly suggest people attend at the beginning if they couldn't solve some basic math problems written on the board the first day of class. Where I went, the first week or so was add/drop and many of the professors would toss in a "prereq" quiz to scare people into dropping who weren't strong enough in the prereqs as another method. And being an engineering class grades weren't "given". For some classes it was well known that there were going to be a lot of C's and D's because the prof wasn't going to dumb down his material if you couldn't keep up because they were believers in normal distributions (and I remember a physics professor who would show the distribution for tests/etc) and that A's really meant you were excelling.
Unfortunately we are told that we have to make engineering “not scary” and “fun” so we get more engineering majors and this is explicitly not to be a weedout class. I do try to work them hard in the recitations to compensate.
And there's a fair cohort of us (note, US-based perspective here) that _did_ go through the traditional electrical engineering education, learned the hard math and analog/mixed-signal engineering needed to put together something like this, dipped our toes in the industry, and then realized all our CS buddies had double our base salaries for objectively easier work.
We've strongly disincentivized gaining mid-level expertise on hard engineering.
> and then realized all our CS buddies had double our base salaries for objectively easier work.
One thing I realised as a graduate student designing RF PCBs and digital circuits was that the debugger for reality sucks. It's really frustrating to be faced with a problem where you just can't get "more information by recompiling with debug flags" and can't easily (or reversibly!) change the system to make it easier to understand. Totally different skillset, and requires a different method of thinking (frankly, at times, with a lot more thought).
This is a huge part of it! I spent a couple years doing IC-level failure analysis, which involves cool toys like electron microscopes, ion beams, strong destructive chemistry… a lot of it was neat, but the feedback loops were hours at best, and often days. Compared with having CI just do this for you automatically, or having something like `guard` running locally, is utterly transformational by comparison.
The HN crowd is primarily software engineers and their curriculum probably doesn't cover this. But a EE can specialize in this field with courses in radar systems, signal processing, control theory, etc.
It's funny because we were brainstorming on the hoop the other night and it hit me that this was the killer app for a "cheap and cheerful" inertial navigation system.
The Trident 2 submarine missile has a gyroscope in it that costs almost as much as the nuclear warhead because it is so resistant to drift that it can be spun up and locked on in port and maintain its position when the submarine is at sea.
If you tried INS with a smart phone or wiimote the errors in velocity estimation will build up quickly and you'll get terrible drift.
In the case of the spatial computing hoop though you know the hoop never gets far away from the user so you can damp the D.C. component of the velocity, work in coordinates relative the user's center of gravity and never notice any drift in the x or y coordinates. (I don't like damping the vertical so much but I think I can live with it.)
Oh, I'm pretty sure the stuff we "web software pukes" have to work with would drive all those old-timer Real Engineers crazy in its own way. It's a bit like how a middle school teacher doesn't necessarily have an easier job than a prestigious professor.
Yeah digging through 2000 page reference manuals and looking for 1 bit differences with nothing other than a serial port/memory debugger is a lot harder than putting up a web page. Now backend stuff at scale is similar complexity. I still do embedded, but I also help/design on the web front ends for said devices :)
That's true. (Although what's with "old-timer"? Most of the mech/aero/etc. engineers I know are under 35.) I'm sort of the bridge between the software and hardware folks where I work, and nobody understands what anyone else does. Which is fine - that's what specialization is. The difference I find is that most hardware folks are at least aware of that, while almost all programmers I've met outside of aerospace don't even know the basic engineering curriculum exists (as exemplified by the comment that started this thread).
Heat seeking missiles started development in 1940s. In the US, they began as an unfunded rogue project. The infrared guidance system was simple and very successful.
One thing a lot of people forget because war movies don't show them, is that by the end of the war allied and German aircraft were absolutely loaded with electronics.
The story of Radar on the ground is well known, but the story of systems like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2S_(radar) (so named apparently because it was a smell that no one had discovered before) is not so well known.
Similarly a lot of these British efforts were more at risk to their own commanders that the Germans at the beginning, because the engineers were having to go through utterly ridiculous hoops to justify basic physics to their superiors. Sometimes their scientific superiors...
https://youtu.be/GJCF-Ufapu8 is a very very good documentary about this kind of thing. Made before the scientists were dead, so lots of gossip.
Randall and Boot should be known by more people, but magnetrons are not as awesome as the nuclear bomb.
The proximity fuses were a marvel - tiny radars put into an antiaircraft shell. Such would never ever have occurred to me, as how could a radar system survive being fired out of a cannon? It doubled the effectiveness of flak.
The Russian military is organized around a land defense of their homeland since they don't have the natural barriers the U.S. has (e.g. they last got invaded in 1941, we last got invaded in 1812.)
You might think they'd invest in fixed SAM systems but mobile SAM systems are so more survivable in a war because the radar for a SAM is highly visible. You really want to hide those systems in terrain and ambush planes going by.
Systems like that are most effective when they operate in a networked mode together with AWACS airplanes like
which use a "look down" pulse doppler radar which can see cruise missiles, UAVs and other low-flying threats. This is a great complement to the radar on a Patriot missile battery which is optimized to ballistic missile threats. Russia's latest S-500 system
I'm puzzled why we haven't created something that can compete with S-300 / S-400 / S-500.
At the very least the Patriot SAM should be redesigned to allow for vertical launching to allow shooting in all directions. If you point Patriot one way and you get ambushed from behind you're basically caught with your pants down.
At the very least you'd need four Patriot missile launchers pointing in all directions to prevent this scenario.
That's why it was funny that Turkey was ostracized for buying Russian/Chinese SAMs ( was it S-400 last or a Chinese version). What else could they possibly buy? The Patriot system isn't even close, and doesn't seem to be working too well for the UAE ( but then again we don't know how S-300/400/500 would deal against drones and light missiles)
My guess is that Russia doesn't have that many S-xxx missile systems, and further that they are much more expensive than the Turkish drones. I imagine they're keeping their powder dry, against the risk of NATO planes appearing over Ukraine.
> I'm puzzled why we haven't created something that can compete with S-300 / S-400 / S-500.
In my opinion it is because the American way of fighting a war doesn’t need it. Let say there is a troublesome country who would want to fly airplanes to shoot at American troops. The war plans against such a threat would start with two steps: 1st supress their air defences. 2nd gain full air dominance.
Supression of air defences is a polite way to say that they pulverize anything which can shoot US airplanes from the ground or even detect US airplanes using a radar.
Gaining full air dominance is a polite way to say that they aim to pulverize all enemy airplanes, runways, taxiways, fueling equipment and maintenance infrastructure.
If that is your method of operation why would you need mobile, survivable air defenses. People who routinely plan on destroying clouds (the source of rain) don’t need an umbrella.
That's the AEGIS system. It works better when land-based, from what I've read; it's dramatically more accurate than the purely naval fleet-defence version.
AEGIS is an integrated, networked system; multiple sensors on multiple platforms (including AWACS) collaborate to detect and hit targets.
There was an AEGIS-equipped ship either in the Black Sea, or trying to get in through the Bosphorus (now closed to naval traffic). The presence of AEGIS ships in the Black Sea would be enough to explain the non-appearance of the Russian airforce.
>I don’t know a single engineer that could even know how to begin to develop a system like that
It's called "controls engineering", and there are plenty of talented people in the field. But you are correct that people who sought a career in websites and cellphones have never heard of it.
Considering the lack of coordination of their ground forces and their absurd OPSEC, it might simply be communication issues. Fuel and maintenance issues are also a safe bet with Russia.
The Russian Buks also seem to be having a bad time against the Bayraktars.
I had a quick chuckle at that. It reminds me of an old joke: a bullet has your name on it, a hand grenade is addressed "to whom it may concern", and a mortar shell is posted general delivery.
The Stinger is deadly against helicopters and fixed wing aircraft in a close air support role. It also is good for sniping at aircraft that are taking off and landing.
Against high altitude bombers and fighter aircraft though it does nothing. With modern precision weapons an aircraft like the B-52 can fly high and have individual munitions be targeted with GPS or laser so it can cause a lot of hurt to ground troops and be out of reach of the Stinger.
Buk isn't a "cheap and cheerful" alternative to S-300. Soviet air defense doctrine was a multilayered approach featuring systems at almost every organizational level from infantry squad up to theater. Buk and S-300 serve at different organizational levels. Both are competent systems and ironically are probably more effective against Soviet derived air forces than western ones.
Starting in WW2 and moving forward each side took a very different evolutionary path in terms of air power and air defense. The west relied far more on combat air craft for air defense because that's what worked on the western front. The soviets had a very different experience in the war and had to fight while being under constant attack from German airpower through most of the war. So they focused on giving their army its own air defense capability.
Fast forward 80 years and western militaries will have a few SAM systems like the larger patriot and the Stringer MANPADS but will primarily rely on fighters to clear the skies. While the Russians have a SAM for every situation and a much smaller tactical air force. The west has also since Vietnam spent a lot of effort on defeating Soviet style SAM systems with improved SEAD tactics and equipment whereas it was never a concern for the Russians because there isn't much in the way of SAMs to suppress.
For those reasons you end up with the ironic twist of Russian SAMs being especially effective against Russian aircraft because they didn't prepare to counter their own systems. They DO have anti-radiation missiles and strike aircraft but not as many as the west and their doctrine is not nearly as well practiced.
True. The Navy has spent more resources on perfecting SAMs than the Army or Air Force have. Standard Missile and Aegis are a very potent combination. So much so that they adapted it to ground based setups with "Aegis Ashore" which is literally the system taken straight off an Arleigh Burke class destroyer and installed as a ground based missile defense system.
I worked on the software for the Ageis and Iron Dome systems. The program got off to a rocky start but once we got things dialed in, it's accuracy became exceptional
I think Aegis and SM are some of the biggest success stories out of the defense sector over the last few decades. Not only is it mature and effective but its also scalable and from what I understand they managed to port the codebase to modern x86 servers and make the libraries more modular as well.
The US blue-water navy has many similar problems to the Soviet Army. Specifically: operating out of range of land-based friendly fighters and interceptors.
And since there are only so many carriers, naval aviation also can't be assumed.
Consequently, SAMs are prioritized, compared to the army or air force.
What transit time? The Airforce establishes air superiority starting at the carrier and extending out the aircraft combat range (500-700miles) + refueling range (500miles) + missile standoff range (300miles). It's a pretty big sphere of influence and the US has 14 of them.
It's wild how many anti-air systems they have deployed, for an almost non-existent enemy air force. At this point they must be effectively supplying the enemy their SAM systems. Very expensive, too - saw a $15M system ditched in a field because the shitty KAMAZ truck carrying it broke its axle.
It's partly doctrine, that's just what they do. Highly mobile AA traveling with the armor is their thing and why change up your process right in the middle of a big deployment (rhetorically, obviously).
The other reason is if things go south and the US/EU decides Putin is bluffing on the nukes, they'll for sure wish they had it because NATO aircraft would color the sky gray.
I can only assume they are keeping their powder dry, or working to limit casualties. I saw a video of a lady riding in a car beside a convoy, and then she threw a molotov and the driver sped off. If that were Iraq in 2003, she car probably would have been lit up.
There are always going to be civilian casualties in war, but it sure looks like they are trying to limit them. Would be worth comparing to other, similar conflicts. Surely a full scale air campaign would lead to more civilian casualties?
Don't forget the decisions of individual soldiers here. If I were forced to drive a tank in a war I did not believe in and a babushka threw a pointless cocktail at me I would not retaliate. These individual actions in war add up.
Especially if there are good chances that the ones you have been ordered to shoot at could be relatives of you or some people close to you.
A lot of Ukrainians and Russians are connected, that's another important factor.
Russia is using thermobaric and cluster munitions in Kharkiv. I really just don't think that Russia has quite as many PGMs as we think and Russia is close enough to most of Ukraine that they can launch regular old rockets from safe territory on the ground.
Has the use of thermobarics been confirmed? I know they were spotted in the area and there was an explosion in Kharkiv, but it could have been gas pipelines that were hit, and I've also see that explaination for the explosion videos.
Tons of pictures/videos of TOS-1 system, even one abandoned on some field. Now can I safely say its from current conflict and from Ukraine? Obviously not, but I personally lean to agree.
Thermobarics are standard issue fuel/air bombs correct? I thought they were specifically designed for anti-personnel use, are they banned or somehow out of the ordinary? I don't understand why it would be notable if they were used.
I think using thermobarics on a city is potentially a serious escalation from hitting airports and other infrastructure, as they are designed to kill people, especially people in shelters.
Because of the ability to rip air out of them, and from the surrounding to sustain longer explosions that penetrate deeper in openings and tunnels. My understanding is that they have an extremely wide blast radius that will kill people taking cover compared to the structural damage they dish out.
Yeah I agree with this - not sure it'll last but if you look at what the Russians did in Georgia, it's clear they're not in "maximal damage" mode yet. The longer this drags out, the worse it'll get for Ukrainian cities but that's my impression of the lack of bombardment from the skies too.
with Ukraine arming anyone who wants to be armed and conscripting all males between 18 and 60 the lines between civilian and soldier are becoming blurred. I saw a video of some kids in a car driving by a tank and throwing a molotov cocktail out the window. To me, they are no longer "civilians" and a legitimate target. It's surprising they lived long long enough to upload the video to social media.
It could be the difference between individual soldiers and Russian commanders. Individual soldier is happy. He gets to back as his truck was destroyed. Missiles are targeted by more senior people.
Without minimizing the awfulness of this invasion and the fact that it must be condemned, it is not nearly as brutal as Russian operations in Chechnya and Syria or the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq, likely because Ukranians are not nearly as much of a racial or cultural other to Russians as Chechens or Syrians. The greater ability of Ukrainians to gain coverage in both traditional and social media may also be a factor.
Thank you for articulating this better than I could.
You had a CBS* commentator straight up saying this is different than Middle East wars since Kyiv is a " civilized city".
That said, I think much of Russia's restraint is due to their end goal. Ukraine's Russian backed president was outted in a coup back in 2014. The new pro West leadership decided to go dancing with John McCain.
This entire conflict could of been avoided if we didn't keep trying to expand NATO. I know I'm not enlisting if the Russians invade Poland tomorrow, but the existence of NATO implies I am.
It's not hard to imagine if Haiti had a US backed leader, who was removed in a coup and then replaced with a pro Russia / pro China president. Now imagine China and Russia announcing plans for various military bases on Haiti. The Russians could finally have a warm water port.
In no universe would America accept Haiti having a right to its own foreign policy. We don't want anyone else playing in our backyard. To be clear, this doesn't justify a stronger country imposing it's will upon a weaker one.
>Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.
Like I said, I'm not enlisting if the Russians invade Poland. If individual American citizens want to a join a Polish foreign legion, that's fine. Maybe the State Department can create a list of approved foreign legions American citizen can join.
Are you saying you would enlist if Germany, France, or the UK was invaded, but specifically Poland isn't worth enlisting for, because it's a former Warsaw Pact country?
Or are you saying that you just don't believe in NATO, you would like the US not to have mutual defense alliances at all, and the expansion of NATO is completely irrelevant to your feelings about NATO?
Poland and Hungary have done autocratic things I don't agree with, but their governments seem to come much closer to following the will of the people then they would if they were again inside Russia's sphere of influence, and I think bringing them inside NATO was good for them.
I'm not sure whether it was a good maneuver strategically, but I'm also not sure it wasn't.
>Or are you saying that you just don't believe in NATO, you would like the US not to have mutual defense alliances at all, and the expansion of NATO is completely irrelevant to your feelings about NATO?
I'm not enlisting for anything short of America actually getting invaded. During the Vietnam War anyone with a bit of money could get deferments. Those are what I call smart men. I feel absolutely no obligation to die in a foreign conflict.
Providing logistic and selling arms is more than fine, but getting directly involved is a completely different matter.
> You had a CNN commentator straight up saying this is different than Middle East wars since Kyiv is a " civilized city".
CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D'Agata, actually.
> It's not hard to imagine if Haiti had a US backed leader, who was removed in a coup and then replaced with a pro Russia / pro China president. Now imagine China and Russia announcing plans for various military bases on Haiti. The Russians could finally have a warm water port.
> In no universe would America accept Haiti having a right to its own foreign policy.
Uh, you know this actually happened in a different Caribbean island state and, while there was a bit of a dispute about nuclear weapons that resulted in both alliances pulling them back from each others borders in a quid pro quo, and a variety of covert and sponsored-third-party actions, the US never committed it's military to an all out assault to displace the Soviet-backed regime, which still exists and is still closely associated with Russia even after the fall of the USSR, a geopolitical alignment outlasting the notional ideological one.
> Uh, you know this actually happened in a different Caribbean island state and, while there was a bit of a dispute about nuclear weapons that resulted in both alliances pulling them back from each others borders in a quid pro quo
What nuclear weapons were being placed in Ukraine? Russia's only argument is that "someday maybe, perhaps, it could possibly happen".
Putin's big speech listed out NATO compatible airbases he objected to as being a soft prelude to expansion, and one of the first things they did was bomb those airbases. The Russian state really was serious about that.
Haiti would not count as a warm water port for this purpose, because it would not serve the Russian mainland at all. Russia has plenty of foreign "warm water" ports it can use already.
Other than the unfortunate Haitians, who have suffered enough already, it is hard to imagine why a vaguely democratic decision by Haiti to become a Russian ally would meet with more than a collective yawn unless Russia planned to station intermediate range nuclear missiles there or something. Russia has plenty of allies in the area already.
The idea that the U.S. wouldn't "let" Haiti or Cuba or Venezuela have their own foreign policy is ridiculous. It does and they do.
You mean the Cuba to which the US has a constant trade emabargo/blockade? The one whose leader they tried for years to kill in the most bizarre ways? Yes sure the US let's them have their own foreign policy. Have a look at what happened in Panama or Nicaragua or Guatemala when people elected leaders which had policies that the US didn't like.
Edit: Just to make it clear, I actually do not believe that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is due to the expansion of Nato (and even if it was it would be completely unjustified) it is due to Putin's megalomania. That doesn't mean we should forget that the US has been extremely aggressive about protecting their interests even by force and by violating international law. There is a reason why they are the country which has been involved in the most wars since WWII
Your Haiti analogy greatly oversimplifies the complexity of the situation. Europe and the West have been bending over backwards to help integrate Russia into the international economy. The entire point of those efforts were to build trade relationships and de-escalate security concerns. Russia has been taking full advantage of those economic relationships while maintaining an aggressive posture towards the buffer states. And as a result, those buffer states have been joining NATO.
The only way your hypothetical analogy would make sense is if Russia/China spent decades trying to improve economic relationships with the US, and the US took advantage of those overtures while maintaining an aggressive military posture. At that point, I think most of the world we be sympathetic with installing a pro Russia/China regime in Haiti.
> This entire conflict could of been avoided if we didn't keep trying to expand NATO.
This is really not a good take. Ukrainians didn't overthrow their government because of NATO expansion. They overthrew their government because it was a corrupt pile of shit that didn't credibly represent their interests. And make no mistake, Putin has always seen Ukraine as in integral and inseparable part of Russian culture. He was never going to allow them to govern themselves, NATO expansion or not.
I'm not sure if the statement of "we didn't keep trying to expand NATO" is correct. Most of the expansion was a result of requests from former USSR states to join, which was then supported by the US and accepted by other member states. I don't think it's correct to we were trying, when it's more likely that former USSR states were trying to pull NATO toward them.
I also am not sure that war would be avoided if NATO didn't expand. Putin and Russia have made statements that suggest a desire to grow their influence over former USSR countries, and those countries resisted by joining NATO or ousting Russian backed leadership.
I agree. Condemn them for the invasion. The "collateral" damage of civilians is part of an invasion. I haven't seen any evidence of targeting civilians as a goal. The US has unfortunate civilian casualties as well during missile strikes.
This is probably the absolute only thing where I think Russia is being unfairly characterized. We'll see though as more intel comes in and if they start unloading on the cities. Possibly holding them to a high standard now, will keep them in check as they get more frustrated.
Yes. What the USA does to other countries is atrocious. It's likely the reason the USAs damage is worst is that we have far superior equipment to do damage. It's horrible and disgusting. But what does it have to do with what is happening in the Ukraine right now?
Because when the West is doing it, no one batts an eye and then devolves into a diatribe about "Freedom" and "Democracy". There are no sanctions, there is very little overt assistance given to our enemies. But when Russia does it we start toying with the idea of nuclear war and allowing groups to go over as foreign fighters.
They are limiting casualities. The bombing of civilians is on purpose, but the purpose is to get negotiating leverage and break will, not to kill as many civilians as possible.
"That would have been "the logical and widely anticipated next step, as seen in almost every military conflict since 1938," wrote the RUSI think-tank in London"
From the development of air power theory a century ago, it's been widely held that strategic bombing of civilian targets is one of the best ways to quickly end a war. The actual failure of strategic bombing to end wars quickly every time it's been tried notwithstanding.
The Japanese surrender in WWII due to sustained strategic bombing of civilian cities without a single troop landing in mainland Japan is a clear contradiction to this take.
If Russia nuked Ukraine they might win the war on Ukraine, sure. Japan didn't even quit until there were two though. Would they have quit with no nukes and just firebombing?
Japan didn't surrender because of anything the US did, but because Russia declared war on them (two days after Hiroshima and a day before Nagasaki).
The US may just as well have dropped 10 more nukes and it wouldn't have changed anything. The Japanese didn't care whether it took a 1.000 bombs to destroy a city or a single one. Even more so, since they didn't know anything about the radioactive fallout and long-term effects. To them, it was just a bigger bomb.
It's not a clear contradiction; it's one of only two cases that are arguable (the other one being NATO bombing of Serbia during the dissolution of Yugoslavia).
It's noted that it's not clear how much the atomic bombings influenced the decision to surrender, versus the near-simultaneous declaration of war by the USSR on Japan. Furthermore, by the time Japan surrendered, it was clear that Japan had already thoroughly lost. Recall that similar bombing campaigns against the UK (Battle of Britain) and Germany utter failed to bring those nations any closer to surrender.
In any case, compared to the actual theorists like Giulio Douhet who were, before World War II, arguing that attacking cities would cause the will of the nations to collapse before they fully mobilized, the actual results fell far short of the theorists.
> It's noted that it's not clear how much the atomic bombings influenced the decision to surrender,
My understanding is that communications between Hirohito and Stalin indicate that Japan was attempting to begin negotiation of a total surrender after Midway and that Truman's diary eludes to this moment. The main argument I've seen to contradict this is that they don't believe Japan wasn't actually going to accept a full surrender at this point.
Modern militaries that don't like taking tons of unnecessary losses on the ground are in love with controlling the air. It's not like there's a wide variety of proven strategies and countries just pick one that they're "in love" with—there's a fairly narrow set, in these circumstances, which all look pretty similar. It's definitely curious that Russia hasn't committed to establishing and leveraging air superiority, despite dedicating very substantial ground forces and on paper being entirely capable of doing so. One of the following must be true:
1) They do not believe they can, so are not trying.
2) They believe they could, but are choosing not to.
3) They tried, but, for some reason that's not currently clear and isn't evident in battlefield losses, failed. (this is probably the least likely and also the most grave—it suggests severe problems with their command structure)
Whichever's the case, it's a real head-scratcher and is the main reason this isn't going how most folks thought it would.
> it suggests severe problems with their command structure
This is what my money is on.
Sending ground forces in without establishing air superiority is ludicrous, for reasons that we are seeing now. I guess we have a good idea where the military coup will originate.
A combination of 1 & 3 seems highly likely in my uninformed opinion. Economically, losing aircraft will make a war very expensive very quickly. Losing large numbers of top of the line aircraft will severely harm Russian military aircraft exports.
With Europe closing its airspace there aren't many valid approach paths into Ukraine, or ways to get out of Ukraine should things go south. Russia has few stealth aircraft. In the 1991 gulf war, 60's era Soviet SA-2 missiles were able to defend Baghdad against non-stealth aircraft despite weeks of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses(SEAD) strikes.
I've often suspected that the F-35 was so expensive only a handful could be built, and would not be risked in combat because it was too expensive to replace.
The F-35 isn't that expensive these days. It's still a huge amount of money to spend on something good for nothing but war, insert your view here, but the price isn't much different than the new F-16s being bought by the Israelis.
That being said however stealth aircraft are not cheap to maintain at all.
Curiously I wonder if a similar problem is occurring with SA-400 missiles and other Russian air defenses. They may be too expensive to shoot at low cost drones such as the bayaktar.
I can imagine a considerable problem with the command structure is that if you've got a war that forces are badly prepared for and reluctant to fight in, you have to tread much more carefully with the orders you give your small number of highly trained (and relatively smart) pilots based on home soil than your large number of dispensible conscript troops you've driven into the conflict (or your gung ho special forces). Easier for them to disobey, and much more cause for alarm if they do, and no matter how dedicated they are to following orders, there are fewer pilots and planes to risk than armoured personnel carriers, artillery units and dated tanks.
The US is "in love with Shock and Awe" because it worked extremely well. Russia doesn't have the air power to pull it off, which is why they are running a version of Deep War, but without a second echelon to prevent their supply lines from getting picked off.
In reality it appears that Russia had a big problem with "ghost units" and rapidly tried to fill their invasion force with conscripts in the weeks before the invasion began. It's why we're seeing so many ill-equipped soldiers and awful tactics where tanks/APCs are driving solo through fields.
Russia absolutely has the air power to pull it off, you clearly haven't seen Syria.
My guess is that they have, correctly, anticipated that mass casualties of white civilians would play very badly internationally and domestically.
e: I'm downvoted.. for what? It's obvious that the ethnicity of the victim matters for both domestic and international perception, all you need to do is look at a bit of media coverage of reporters bemoaning that this is happening to "blue eyed, blond haired" people or in the "civilized world." There is a different standard for what sort of casualties are considered acceptable.
It seems like you're trying to shoe-horn in an entirely different point? How does maintaining air supremacy as a military tactic relate to mass casualties?
I downvoted you because this line of logic is deployed, I believe, by race obsessed westerners who are privately fuming that a shooting war has sidelined their culture war for a few weeks. "Don't forget about me and the things I care about!"
Just because a talking head or two makes those claims does not mean it is all of the sudden the truth. If Russia was worried about the looks of white civilian casualties, they wouldn't have invaded Ukraine. By the way, how many news reporters didn't make the claim that people only care about this because blue eyed/blonde haired people are involved?
I agree, but that is a completely different point than "The western world only cares about this conflict because the victims have blue eyes and blonde hair"
But if you compare the outrage about what was happening in Syria (or Iraq or Afghanistan) to the outrage now, we clearly are at a very different level. It can't be because the Russian are acting so much more ruthlessly now.
If you have a theory to explain a set of facts, pointing to the set of facts as an implicit justification for your theory does not logically follow.
Maybe Westerners care more about the Ukrainian situation because Ukraine was by and large a peaceful, lawful country until the war started. Do you think the western response would have been a little different if there was a pre-existing civil war in Ukraine, and Russia stepped in to try to turn the tide for one of the factions?
I don't know how to say this nicely, but you seem not to have been paying attention. There was a pre-existing war happening. Russia annexed the Krim in 2014 and there have been skirmishes in the separatists areas ever since.
Also do tell what was the existing civil war in Iraq?
The guardian had an article about some of the comments made by journalist and politicians and there is no other way then to say they are racist.
How was the conflict between Ukraine and Russia playing out before 2 weeks ago? How was the conflict in Syria before US/Russia involvement? Would you call them comparable?
If Westerners only care about blonde hair blue eyed people, why did no one care about the Ukrainian war before 2 weeks ago?
Your link has, I think, 4 people who make a claim about why the West cares about the war. Is there a reason you put so much weight on those 4 people, but not on the thousands of other journalists covering the situation who aren't making those claims? Did you know a single one of those people before hearing their coverage of the war?
Worked well to what end exactly? They decimated the North Korean population and made an eternal enemy out of them. They fought insurgents for 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I assume that Russia doesn't want the same result in a neighbouring country.
I don't think it is just about shock and awe. It's about controlling the airspace. Controlling the airspace has advantages during conflict outside of bombing.
It's not necessarily about 'Shock and Awe' attacks on Ukrainian targets, though. They're also allowing drone and aircraft attacks on their tanks, troops, and supply chains. You would expect the Russian air force to be seeking air superiority and providing support to their troops.
> Slav fellowship does not work in wars. No fellowship works in wars.
Historically combatants have treated their opponents differently based on race and existing cultural attitudes. Don't see why it would be any different this time around.
Tim Dillon had a Ukrainian comedian call in to his podcast who made the quip, yes we are family, but families can hate each other even more than strangers.
>Historically combatants have treated their opponents differently based on race and existing cultural attitudes
Huh? when have that ever been true? European religious wars have been huge bloodsheds, communist regimes routinely genocided their own (often quite homogenous) populations, Lebanon's civil war saw neighbors shooting at each other.
The truth of the matter is : when people want to fight, they will find something that makes their enemies different and alien, because it's uncomfortable to imagine yourself in the place of the dead body that was previously a living human.
Race and Blood just so happen to be very convenient to latch on, because they're immutable (for now) genetic characteristics that make the gulf between you and your enemies look huge, a very desirable property in a dehumanization tactic. When people don't have those, they start latching on less immutable but nonetheless difficult-to-change things like religion, language and culture. And when people don't have those either, they start latching onto who their enemies voted for in the last election or their stance on <insert pet issue>, which are very mutable but also very numerous and can always be found and used as basis for dehumanization, their mutabilitiy and arbitrariness notwithstanding.
Technically, this was actually true in WWII. German army behavior in west was horrible, in east much much worst. Their behavior toward gypsies was super bad. And their behavior towards Jews worst of the worst.
But the range there is from "super bad" to "genocidal", so.
It's been true literally since written records of conflict have been kept. Look at the Punic Wars vs. the Peloponnesian War for example. Look at the Japanese in the Warring States vs. Japanese in China in the 1930s. Even in European history it is true. Compare the attitudes of the English towards the Germans in WWI vs in WWII. (Edit: or as a sibling comment notes, the behavior of the Germans on the different fronts).
There's always going to be dehumanization in war, but how much depends on things like race, culture, and existing attitudes towards the enemy.
>Look at the Punic Wars vs. the Peloponnesian War for example
Not sure how this supports your thesis. Are you trying to say that the punic wars was more devastating/brutal than the Peloponnesian because the first had people of different races fighting while the second had only Greeks fighting amongst themselves ? there are several problems with this :
- We have no estimates of the casualties on both sides of both conflicts, Wikipedia only has an estimate of one side of the Peloponnesian, and it's only the military casualties.
- In the Peloponnesian war, Sparta actually allied with the Persians. They were entirely OK with people of different races murdering their fellow Greeks, I think they had zero problems murdering their own race too. (and burning the whole city if it came to that, but it didn't, but that doesn't really mean Spartans were softer because their enemies were Greek, it just means the Athenians surrendered quicker and didn't try again, unlike the Punics)
>Japanese in the Warring States vs. Japanese in China in the 1930s
This is really comparing apples and oranges, those two wars are about 5-6 centuries apart, whatever you're comparing as proxy for 'brutal' or 'destructive' is very much confounded by technological advances in warfare.
>Compare the attitudes of the English towards the Germans in WWI vs in WWII.
I don't understand what this is trying to say. Did English attitudes toward Germany differ between WW1 and WW2 (besides the trivial differences explainable by the change in geopolitical atmosphere and warfare style)? how much of that is both parties seeing each other as different or similar races?
>the behavior of the Germans on the different fronts
I never said that race-based dehumanization isn't brutally effective and leads to astonishing results when it could be used, in fact I placed it at the top of the hierarchy when it comes to dehumanization algorithms.
What I'm denying here is the claim that this efficiency of dehumanization can't be achieved using other methods or combination of methods, I'm asserting that it can, just with more effort/propaganda. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case in this specific Ukraine-Russia conflict, I don't trust the hose of (dis)information on this conflict the internet spews every day anyway, so I don't really have a strong opinion on anything in it besides the most naked facts.
All what I'm disputing is the claim
>Wars with same-race combatants are, always or most of the time or on average, less brutal than wars with different races fighting
I'm saying that this is false and reductive, Religion in particular is a very strong counterexample. Communism-style genocides is another.
> This is really comparing apples and oranges, those two wars are about 5-6 centuries apart, whatever you're comparing as proxy for 'brutal' or 'destructive' is very much confounded by technological advances in warfare.
I'm not going to reply line by line to your other points. Though I disagree with your interpretation of my argument it's clear we aren't going to reach agreement there, but this statement is just wrong. Genocide has occurred throughout history, including at times prior to and contemporary with the warring states period. Technology has nothing to do with it. For example the Dzungar's in China in the 1700s. More recently the Rwandan genocide was carried out with primitive weapons. There are numerous other examples.
Yes, after Grozny and Aleppo, anyone saying Russians are trying to limit destruction is deluded or a shill. Russian military strategy has been to force surrender through causing as much civilian death as possible for a while now.
Based on his speeches, both before invasion and the leaked one that was supposed to go out after a win, Putins objective is genocide. "The Ukrainian question", dude is literally quoting Hitler.
There is a huge difference between what people are willing to do to racial and cultural others v.s. what they are willing to do to people who look, speak, and live more or less just like them.
Yes, Russia was extremely brutal in Chechnya and in Syria. But consider how brutal the US was in Iraq, and consider how we would operate in a hypothetical war against Canada.
There is not much difference bwtween people from Germany, France and the UK, yet, World War I was one of the most horrible wars in history. A few decades later, there still was not much difference between people from the UK and Germany yet the bombings of the German cities by the allied forces were some of the horrible in history.
At 80% conscription rate, the RF army is seriously vulnerable to mass-realization of international views. Many young Russians were deceived into this war and would rather be with their families.
Yes, I'd love to see more chatter on here about creative info/psyops.
The fact that Russian troops are using smartphones and Google leaves
them wide open. We have starlink sats above them and control DNS.
Hell, we could probably convince them they'd already won and been
ordered home.
You can donate money directly to the Ukraine army. Sometimes there are browser-hosted DDoS links posted here but they don't always last. You can lobby satellite firms to provide real-time video to Ukrainians.
They expected to win quickly and easily - and are shocked it did not happened. Whether they pull the punches will be seen later. Historically, there was not much holding back punches between Russia and Ukraine. You may start reading about Holodomor, which is still debated whether it counts as genocide or not.
For that matter, historically, Russia holding punches was not exactly the thing. Not even toward Russians.
The original propaganda line was that Ukrainians are basically Russians being taken home now. That nonsense was shattered by now. The idea that this will stop punches now that they are refusing, purely because both are white, is something only Americans can think.
-----------
War in Syria did not started by indiscriminate bombing of cities. It got there through series of escalations when rebels refused to give up.
> They expected to win quickly and easily - and are shocked it did not happened.
Very possible, but neither you nor me are in the position to know that.
> Holodomor, which is still debated whether it counts as genocide or not.
For that matter, historically, Russia holding punches was not exactly the thing. Not even toward Russians.
The Holodomor was clearly a completely orthogonal issue to this as it wasn't a military conflict.
> Not even toward Russians.
What are you referencing in terms of conflict? Probably not chechens, because that would only go in favor of GPs point.
> War in Syria did not started by indiscriminate bombing of cities. It got there through series of escalations when rebels refused to give up.
> The idea that this will stop punches now that they are refusing, purely because both are white, is something only Americans can think.
The domestic opposition in Russia over killing far fewer people is already much larger than it was to the intervention over Syria which killed far more civilians early on.
It is not something "only Americans can think" that Russians care more about the lives of people of close ethnic relation to them as compared to Syrians.
> Holodomor is relevant, ot orthogonal.
> I meant purgers, internal thing toward Russians.
Neither of those were covered on the TV. They are also from over half a century ago.
> 2011 to 2015 is long time of escalations.
But 2014 to 2022 isn't?
The idea that Russians care equally about the lives of Syrians and the lives of ethnic Russians & Ukrainians is fantasy. It's obviously false, even if Russians killed Russians in purges 60 years ago.
Russian TV is not broadcasting Ukraine war. For that matter, western tvs are not broadcasting full brutality of wars either. It is all sanitized for viewers good feelings.
> 2014 to 2022
Sure, Ukraine actually got ready to defend. Russia actually got to the point of being ready to start war again.
But, actual full war started last week with hope of 96 hours till victory, installation of puppet goverment and weak divided west. They wanted them to be kind of like Belarus, useful for further own plans.
> The idea that Russians care equally about the lives of Syrians and the lives of ethnic Russians & Ukrainians is fantasy. It's obviously false, even if Russians killed Russians in purges 60 years ago.
They don't care about Ukrainians lives at all. If they keep not winning, they will move to deep active hate. Ukrainians are already nazi for them and that includes the Jewish president. And that sentiment is real inside Russians who do believe oficial version.
Purges were not 60 years ago. They were the thing Stalin shot himself into own leg right before WWII. But, fuckup at start is on brand here. Stalin has raising popularity as maligned father of Russia in Russia last 10-15 years.
> Historically, there was not much holding back punches between Russia and Ukraine. You may start reading about Holodomor, which is still debated whether it counts as genocide or not.
This is such a demagogy and a narrow-sighted view of history. It is always brought up only for the purpose of pouring more oil on the flames and turning up nationalistic tensions.
Holodomor has nothing to do with Ukrainians or Russians. It had happened all over the Soviet Union.
Much more Kazakhs had died relatively to their total population, and almost the same amount of Russians in an absolute value.
Hungers of 1930s were a global event, not something conjured by one particularly nasty Georgian.
Wikipedia mentions that it is contested if it is intentional or not.
Personaly for me, intentionality doesn't seem far fetched, given gulags, forced relocations to siberia without supplies and liberal presentation of history/facts
(ussr guides said that kaliningrad is russian from olden times).
> Hungers of 1930s were a global event, not something conjured by one particularly nasty Georgian.
Aside from Ukraine and Kazakhstan (both under the control of "one particularly nasty Georgian") which other regions of the globe suffered from mass (1+ million) deaths caused by famine in the 1930s?
> Slav fellowship does not work in wars. No fellowship works in wars.
There's plenty of videos of Russian troops not attacking civilians and surrendering. But there's also videos of them attacking civilian targets...
It seems there's some Slavic fellowship at play but that it's mostly among regular soldiers, not the leadership. Then again, maybe the gross incompetence shown by the Russians is a result of said fellowship + plausible deniability...
Either way, the war's gone shockingly bad for the Russians. Whether or not Ukraine's reports are entirely correct, everyone can agree it's embarrassing to the Russians.
Also the number of Russian news sources closed and journalists arrested, fired from govt aligned media, or willing to leave the country is increasing daily. That would be an indicator that the Russian regime is deeply concerned about the public not falling for that propaganda anymore.
In terms of numbers according to the Wikipedia article they have about 650 air planes and ~300 helicopter's.
Thats a solid fighting force for a relatively small country.
Russia as lots of tools - missiles and such that are good at destroying buildings.
The problems in that Putin understands that the cities in Ukraine have value. He is trying to take them over with minimal destruction to the buildings at least right now. That way he could move his people with with out needed to rebuild.
Yeah I can't help but wonder if Putin is trying to run a playbook that worked in parts of Georgia and "worked" in Chechnya (eventually remaining Russian territory, at great cost), but doesn't scale to major Ukranian cities.
Russia's only possible 'winning' outcome at this point is to subjugate and murder huge numbers of Ukrainians under a brutal police state, if Putin wants to hold most of the population centers. It'll take a very long time before they'll stop fighting back, Russia will have to debase the culture (they might try it China style, bring in a lot Russian citizens to live in those cities and begin a full, forced transformation, while you violently try to strip away Ukrainian culture).
It sure seems like Putin expected them to capitulate quickly and become largely docile before the occupying Russian soldiers while a new government is installed. Not much else explains their approach thus far other than that (their supply provisioning was clearly built for a very short conflict).
If Russia doesn't go for the full brutal police state approach, they'll hemorrhage with any typical occupation and will have to leave, and any new system they attempt to install and leave behind will be toppled rapidly (the Russians will have to keep sending forces in).
I agree, that's the only thing they know how to do efficiently:
> If Russia doesn't go for the full brutal police state approach
Ukrainians are used to living in a democracy though, so it may not be easy/possible.
> bring in a lot Russian citizens to live in those cities and begin a full, forced transformation, while you violently try to strip away Ukrainian culture
That's what they did back in the 1930s in East Ukraine. They had to starve out/relocate the locals to make room for the "colonists". But doing this in the 21st century? I shudder to think how this would go down. And if they don't do this, anyone who comes over to settle will be met with extreme hostility.
I believe Putin lives in the past when it comes to understanding Ukraine and Ukrainians. It looks like he might actually believe (have believed?) his own propaganda.
Yes, and looking forward he has the spotlight of the world agents him.
I do not think the question is wether or not Ukraine will fall to the Russian state. But if the Russian economy and current government will stay viable through the duration of the war.
Global sanctions applied correctly could cause a refugee crises in Russia population ~144 million. In short, Russian people need their basic needs met. Just like any human. They will go where that can happen more easily if their own country can not provide. 57,792 kilometres of Russian boarder length is ripe for exit.
> 57,792 kilometres of Russian boarder length is ripe for exit.
“border”, and the vast majority of that is coastline, and the vast majority of the coastline is Arctic coastline, which is very much not ripe for exit.
Many conflicting viewpoints here. Sure, there's been less of a push from Russia than everyone expected, but it's not like Ukraine controls the sky either.
Are Ukranians really still flying? If that was the case, the mentioned 40-mile convoy heading to Kiev would have been hit by now, no? Russians driving vehicles bumper to bumper shows VERY strong confidence that they own the sky, so things might not be as rosy for Ukraine as they seem.
> If that was the case, the mentioned 40-mile convoy heading to Kiev would have been hit by now, no?
Not necessarily. That's likely to be a target-rich, but well-defended area. As long as it's not moving - especially given rumors of fuel troubles - there may be better things for the Ukranian air force to tackle, like helicopters moving troops around.
Strafing implies—again—flying low over a potentially heavily-defended target. If even a handful of ground troops in that convoy are carrying MANPADs it would be suicide, and that's to say nothing of self-propelled anti-aircraft guns that are almost certainly accompanying the convoy.
Again, there are probably far more urgent targets for the Ukrainian Air Force than a convoy that hasn't moved in days.
> No, this convoy would be an obvious strafing target. I'm disappointed that the Ukrainians didn't even attempt it. Or we haven't heard about it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the convoy had the equivalent of a 1000 US Stinger AA missiles or more. It's not with strafing if there's too high a chance the jet would get shot down.
As a layman, I'm guessing the only things worth the risk might be some operation that could potentially trap the convoy (e.g. between two knocked-out bridges).
Ukraine really doesn't want war, the odds are stacked against them and without significant outside ground troops they'll be devastated even if Russia is as incompetent as they currently appear.
Killing aggressors is often used as an excuse for the aggressors to be more aggressive and Russia's army is large enough to replace that convoy a few times over without much of a sweat. Violence also helps back the idea that Russia needs to be there to stop the violent nazis that state media has painted Ukrainians to be (goes without saying, this is completely fabricated).
It's also a morale killer; a lot of Russians have Ukrainian relatives. A lot of the captured combatants are very young and seem confused about why they're there (yes, could just be propaganda).
Ukraine just wants them to go home. The Ukrainian people don't really have a conflict with the Russian people.
>Violence also helps back the idea that Russia needs to be there to stop the violent nazis that state media has painted Ukrainians to be (goes without saying, this is completely fabricated).
The real problem is, who gives a shit if a small unit in the Ukrainian National Guard is made up of far right extremists? It's a purely internal matter for the Ukrainians to deal with however they see fit, and provides zero justification for Russia's invasion.
But by lying and claiming it's a lie you're going to make anyone who looks into the truth behind the matter more likely to become sympathetic to the Russian version of events.
It would be exactly the same as calling all Americans Nazi's during the reign of Trump. There is no foundation in fact all American's are but there are small groups he as the President supported who were Nazi's. This is a plain lie to serve their propaganda.
>It would be exactly the same as calling all Americans Nazi's during the reign of Trump.
Were any far-right groups formally integrated into the US military, federal law enforcement, or anything else like that during Trump's presidency? That's the difference here, the Azov battalion was a private militia that was made an actual part of the Ukrainian military.
I'm sure you could make a link if you really wanted (I don't believe it and hate your political party likes to call everyone fascist / racist similarly to Russia.
But there were many articles I remember about white power type of people biggest terror threat by FBI, of course half the population who believed everyone's fascist (see, these locals agree with us!). I'm certain radicals often go to military, especially right wing, so there's the military connection. I'm also certain the whole police force was white supremacist organization and fascist (you might use something interesting like drug addict guns running the streets killing civilians without hesitation like Putin).
So all in all its up to you interpret the world and how widespread something really is and if it deserves an action or pretext for war. Muellers report revealed GRU was running BLM social media and guns rights activists at the same time.
Sincerely from the bottom of my heart I suggest every American to de-escalate because most certainly its not fun to live in a society when things have to be solved by violence between countrymen and Putin has done cleanical job.
It'd be more like if the US were fighting a civil war and substantial fighters on the government side were part of neo-Nazi paramilitaries that had swastikas as their flag.
Oh and also if the US government started banning other languages then english.
None of this justifies Russian imperialism, but I think we get too caught up in war and can often brush the crimes of the side we agree with under the rug.
No, the azov battalion is much more integrated into the ukrainian army than anything comparable during trump's presidency. This is from the official Ukrainian national guard twitter, where they seem proud of the azov batallion dipping munition in pork lard before fighting Muslim chechens:
Could you not imagine the Proud Boys being allowed to serve as a unit if Canada seized Montana and Idaho, and the national guard needed resources? (With the assumption that the US had a GDP equivalent to Ukraine's.)
If you have a limited headcount, a country invading you, and a violent bunch of nationalists who want to fight the invaders, you're going to turn them down?
Keep in mind Ukraine is a very poor country being attacked by a much larger, richer, and more powerful country. This would be more comparable to Mexico deputizing the cartels if the US decided to invade.
I can't help but think Putin's guise of "denazifying Ukraine" was a poorly understood attempt to gain some favor with those in Western societies that see themselves as fighting fascism and right-wing extremism.
As a westerner, I've definitely noticed my more left leaning friends agree with actions that seemingly contradict classical liberal ideals (free speech, free association) as long as such actions seem to be in service of fighting fascism and misinformation. Perhaps some propaganda strategists assumed that 'fighting nazis' was an acceptable parallel to how the United States claims it is defending freedom/democracy whenever it intervenes in some other country. It obviously didn't work.
Russians don't know what Nazis are. They just know some people called Nazis attacked them in WW2, so denazifying = stopping enemies of Russia.
It isn't talking about the Azov battalion or anything; that's an uncalled-for steelmanning because everyone is free associating things they read about in the news.
Fighting nazis/nazism is a 80 year old commie propaganda meme. They used it to brainwash us before 1990 in my country as well. I think it strikes a chord with most of the former residents of the USSR.
My granma told me what was happening in Khmelnik (West Ukraine) at times of German occupation.
50% of the city was Jewish. And almost zero left in first few months. And that was done primarily by locals from UPA - not Germans. You can hide from a German but cannot hide from your neighbor.
UPA and Stepan Bandera[1] is a hero of Ukraine now - it is a street in Kiev named after him.
Despite the fact that Poland and Russia condemn him as a war criminal - for massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians.
And now Ukrainian refugees are coming to Poland... That will not be that easy ... Liberal values are quite thin as practice shows.
I am quite surprised that nice Jew guy mr. Zelensky didn't do anything about it. Probably because he is not who rule there.
> I can't help but think Putin's guise of "denazifying Ukraine" was a poorly understood attempt to gain some favor with those in Western societies that see themselves as fighting fascism and right-wing extremism.
> As a westerner, I've definitely noticed my more left leaning friends agree with actions that seemingly contradict classical liberal ideals (free speech, free association) as long as such actions seem to be in service of fighting fascism...
Nah, this is targeted at Russians. I think that as a westerner you underestimate the power of the myth of Russians saving the world from fascism. This is the very core of their identity. You can find some interesting details here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1497306746330697738.html
Personal experience: I grew up during cold war in one of east-european satelites of the Soviet union. That myth was probably weaker here than in the Soviet union itself, yet it felt ever-present; kind of representation of the mythical struggle of good versus evil. When me and my friends were playing "soldiers" as kids, we were always Russians shooting at fascists. And I remember loving books for kids where some Russian paratrooper befriends local boy and together fight fascism... This was during the latest stages of the communist regime, when almost everyone here hated communists and especially Russians. The idealized memory of their heroic struggle against fascism was the only positive thing that survived in the minds of people.
Obviously, no mention of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact etc. in history books.
Second time in fifteen minutes I happen to come across you serving up weird apalogetic interpretations of dictators and dictator-wannabes. (First time here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30456634 )
Russia's claim is that they must liberate Ukraine because its government is being run by nazis that are executing Russians. That claim is entirely false. Maybe my fault for saying "Ukrainians" instead of "the Ukrainian government" but that was my point. Anything outside of that is needlessly pedantic and creates no interesting dialogue.
What I'm wondering about here is that this seems to have started out relatively detached from the state in 2014 and became more integrated later on. Most sources and events in the article are from the 2014-2015 period. Perhaps they have been kept more in check as they were integrated?
They hit the fuel train that was supplying the convoy with a drone strike and released the footage. The convoy has been stalled for days now, both due to fighting and due to supply chain issues (such as having their supply train blow up).
Claiming there's a "the" convoy and Ukraine has either not ever struck it, or has only struck it once, seems to assume a satellite picture you saw from 2 days ago is the only thing that's happening in the country. A lot has gone down since then they're not going to tell you about.
That was my thought too. They have the luxury if just sitting there waiting safely for the right time while the capital self implodes. Western press talks a lot about it, meanwhile in the South the war is going badly.
Sources? I'm trying to diversify media and would love anything that doesn't filter through a pro- or anti-Russia lens. So far Al Jazeera is the best I've found.
I'll second Al Jazeera. I've been looking at various news sources trying to find unbiased up to date info and they are the best I've found so far. The daily live blogs are great when I have the time to follow them.
Well it's not going badly, it's expected that Russia would win because of how much bigger they are. It's more that it's going badly for Russia in the north and expectedly in the south.
Of course, being able to capture land doesn't mean they can occupy it.
If there's one thing Russia is very good at, it's surface to air defense.
They've screwed so much of this operation thus far, but I bet you that good chunks of that column consist of Tunguskas and Tors, and the Ukrainians know it.
I can’t decide if the people here in the comments spend too much time watching action movies or too little.
Obviously the first thing that pops to mind when you hear “air superiority” and “40 mile convoy of enemy tanks” is “bomb that convoy to dust”. The second thing that should pop is “ambush”. Losing 5 aircraft to surface to air missiles to take out 5 tanks would be a poor tradeoff.
Doubtless bombing the convoy is something Ukraine has considered. Also doubtless they are aware that the convoy isn’t guaranteed to be a parade of sitting ducks.
i'm no military tactician but if it's not getting closer and not able to hit you then it's not a threat. they probably have bigger problems than a stalled convoy.
"Earlier today, the enemy occupying force in Ukraine mercilessly attacked our peacekeeping force as it peacefully advanced towards Kyiv with humanitarian aid.
President Putin has authorized the use of overwhelming force to evict the occupiers and avenge our fallen servicemen. President-in-Exile <insert expendable criminal> leads the official people's government from Belarus and blah...blah..."
There is nothing at all that has stopped the military from attacking such an obvious target, but it would hurt Ukraine's plea as a victim seeking peace from the RUS citizens and provide truthiness to Putin's internal propaganda.
Better to let this encirclement occur, the thaw hits, RUS armor stuck with harrassed supply lines and the hell of urban combat against a determined populace. Meanwhile, your western flank is feeding advanced weaponry into the remaining UKR units and your economy has imploded.
Take all the corruption, assumptions RUS had, etc. and it all still looks like a scenario from some HS history class to help teach about Caesar or Stalingrad.
It's also possible there are new, not-yet-publicly-disclosed anti-aircraft countermeasures/weapons. So, after seeing hints of greater-than-expected losses from unknown causes, the Russians may be wary of putting more aircraft at risk until more is understood, & tactics adapt.
I'm not sure if that makes sense. The goal is not to shoot aircraft down, the goal is to prevent them from coming in the first place.
Wouldn't you want to disclose the hell out of your extremely effective anti-aircraft weapons so you don't have to use them as much? Obviously not the positioning or numbers but just that you have them...
(obligatory I don't know what I am talking about, but) Russia has heavy artillery with crazy range. If they know you have air defenses they will just use artillery shelling instead that bypasses your defense, instead of giving you bombers or landing paratroopers as targets. I think that's how most missiles have been sent to Ukrainian cities so far. I don't think deterrence was a credible option for Ukraine before.
Not if early disclosure accelerates the development of countermeasures!
Nor if you’re worried about a wider conflict - perhaps also involving Asia – & want both maximal degradation of Russian capabilities, & “mystery” advantages for as long as possible.
Surprise is a force multiplier, but a new capability is only a surprise for a short period.
And a simplistic model assuming the Ukrainian allies are optimally pursuing “prevention” as their goal insufficient to explain all mysteries.
If the EU had been clearer about how intense sanctions would be, & how firm they considered the ‘red line’ limiting conflict to the regions Russian-allied forces already claimed, maybe the whole invasion could have been deterred!
They weren’t so clear & firm, either because they were hiding the strength of their resolve, or the resolve only materialized late. The latter is currently the official story, but such things often only become known, if ever, years or decades later. People still debate whether Spain sunk the Maine in 1898, or FDR ignored or minimized advance warnings of Pearl Harbor to shepherd the US into WW2 in 1941.
There’s also a gigantic phase change in strategy between when you believe an aggression is deterrable, & when you think it inevitable. If deterrence is an option, sure, show strength – but be aware the potential aggressor may detect any bluffs, or discount real strength as a bluff. But as soon as you decide war is inevitable, you may instead want to hide strengths, for a more decisive military response later.
If the US/NATO concluded an invasion was inevitable 1 month, 6 months, or even years ago, there was plenty of time to secretly deploy “just in case” novel weapons & tactics - even while Ukraine’s leadership, especially, was publicly signaling “no war expected” & avoiding any overt mobilization.
You only need to read/listen to German news, to know that there can't have been a "grand conspiracy" of Europeans to not show enough resolve. It is very clear that many (on both sides of the political spectrum, but particularly on the left) did not believe Putin would attack, they considered this the usual sabre-rattling and were completely shocked when he attacked.
Also, the risk of deploying secret weapons into a state with significant corruption would have been much too high.
If you assign conclusive weight to recent "news", rather than historical precedents, I think you'll remain at the mercy of constructed narratives about what's really happening in high-stakes diplomacy & warmaking.
The US was shouting from the rooftops that they expected an attack, in a manner putting real credibility at risk. While laypeople, & left footsoldiers, may have completely discounted the possibility, Germany & others in NATO are close enough allies they'd have seen more of the tangible reasons why the US was saying that.
Note that feigned surprise can also be a conscious tactic, to help shepherd-along any alliance stragglers, or domestic opinion. Or, excuse inaction. "No one could have known", say the official mouthpieces for those who ignored the alarms from those who did know. "We are blameless!"
Further, if there was actual confidence in policymakers that an attack was unlikely, & that Putin was deterrable, then pre-announcing the severity of the response would have been very cheap! You won't have to do it, in the expected case. And pre-announcing makes the expected case even more likely.
The risk of coordinating with a leaky/corrupt regime isn't necessarily disqualifyng. There may be portions of the Ukraine government/military in which there was very high trust - such as close contacts in special forces, & those who have repeatedly proven themselves in the last ~8y of lower-grade hostilities. Or, people whose comms have been completely pierced – so NATO knows exactly how much corruption, or mixed-loyalties, they'll express.
Weaponry could also have been pre-positioned just outside Ukraine, or kept in the custody/knowledge of trusted contractors or deniably pre-positioned special forces. I hope you don't think Russians, like the saboteur groups repeatedly confronted in Ukrainian cities, are the only forces who can pretend to be someone else when it suits them!
As another example, no one outside of the home airbase support teams know who's really flying a fighter jet, unless enemies shoot it down & recover the pilot. I hope Ukraine has some world-class fighter pilots! But with lives and practically priceless (in the short term) military hardware at stake, if an even 10% better pilot is ready & willing from an allied counry, I suspect Ukraine can grant them a uniform & citizenship instantly. (It's been surprising how many NATO countries have said it's OK for their private citizens to go fight in Ukraine.)
You massively underestimate the complexity required of any such conspiracy. NATO has 30 member states, EU has 27 member states. Most have leaders who can not ignore domestic public opinion and they almost never agree on anything. Some have leadership positions with more ceremonial role, who nevertheless have access to classified material and/or are formally the commander of the armed forces. The likelihood that even the eurosceptic leaders who were widely considered to be Putin's allies were all in on some secret plan is nil. They are simply not capable of keeping this a secret. Conspiracy theories all have this same problem, where they underestimate how many layers of bureaucracy are involved in running something as large as a country or an army.
It's much more likely that many politicians were genuinely surprised by the invasion. They ignored the Eastern Europeans, as always, who were just being paranoid about Russia, as always. People tend to ignore problems that are hard to deal with, especially when solving them seems costly, until they can ignore them no longer.
As far as I can tell, none of Germany, France, or Italy – key countries who'd seemed a bit squishy – have 'eurosceptic' leaders. And I'm not alleging any "secret plan" requiring coordination – some "conspiracy" to hide the certainty of a stronger response – just the normal duplicity & halfheartedness & wishful-thinking of politicians, which you allude to.
That stronger pre-invasion deterrence wasn't popular in "domestic public opinion" is all that it takes, for the private discussions between the national-security establishments & top rulers to go roughly:
PRE-WAR SANCTION HAWKS (eg: US): "They're gonna invade all Ukraine, here's how we know, precommitting to all the tough measures you'd surely do if that happens might deter it."
PRE-WAR SANCTION DOVES (eg: DE): "Well, really-specific toughness up front isn't popular with our voters, & we're still hoping for that tiny chance Putin's just saber-rattling, despite your evidence. So, if what you say materializes, we'd be able to be tougher than Putin expects. But we can't signal that beforehand, no matter the benefits."
Voila. They've hidden their true level of commitment to retaliate economically, under the eventuality we find ourselves in – no fancy multilateral secret plans required.
The flip in Germany, especially, was dizzying, wasn't it? Do you think the whole package was improvised in the preceding few days? Or that it was assembled from preexisting "break in case of fire" emergency plans, at the very top, that lower-ranking party-members & coalition partners simply didn't need-to-know? I'm saying the latter.
Yes, I literally think that. It's not a coincidence that some of the claimed sanctions or support for Ukraine had to be walked back (jets) -- it's a direct consequence of lacking preparation and coordination.
One example of something that wasn't prepackaged or prepared in any way: There are reports that only Lindner and Scholz knew about the 100bn EUR fund beforehand, the rest were surprised.
One thing I remember is a Russian fighter operating in Northern West Syria accidentally strayed into Turkish airspace and the Turks shot it down immediately. Combine that with the Russians would have a lot of trouble replacing any losses.
Would be possible that their objective was to start by invading easily the Ukraine and Moldova then with close base to NATO old soviet nations start the "real" war to conquer all their "territories" back?
If so, their plan just completely blew up now with their destroyed economy and wasting a lot more of their planned resources to capture only the first step… And Putin don't want to admit/face defeat so is trying to win the Ukraine even with the fact that he already lost.
It all is so insane, it is freaking hard to understand these maniacs…
I believe they were working under the assumption it would be a walk in the park, once the central government was captured or killed.
To strengthen this assumption here's a canned article which was likely meant to be published had things gone according to plan, but pulled, since they hadn't.
Why precisely they thought they'd meet no serious opposition in their attempted airdrop near Kyiv is anyone's guess. Mine is that Putin started believing his own tales about Nazis taking Ukraine hostage, assuming the populace is dying to be liberated from them.
Things crumbled once this met a different reality on the ground, and now they're trying to raise the stakes, and have become desperate enough to begin indiscriminately shelling population centres, Kharkiv most notably.
Funny how westerners are surprised by this. Not telling the grunts what they are going into has been Russian modus operandi since forever... Just like throwing bodies at the problem, sending conscripts from Central Asia first (throwing actual Russians into the meat grinder might prove unpopular), rampant looting (including of the most absurd stuff like toilets in Georgia 2008), etc, etc.
Somehow most of the pundits and analysts have been blindsided by this stuff, even though it's common knowledge in Eastern Europe.
I just wrote the exact same thing before seeing your comment, just not so eloquently. I think you are spot on, that really is the only "rational" explanation.
> Why precisely they thought they'd meet no serious opposition...
Isn't that what everybody thought?
Didn't NATO also think that?
Isn't that why the US and friends categorically refused boots on the ground, no-fly-zones or even just strategic ambiguity?
Or maybe, things are just slow, because they are slow..
I think we need to consider the possibility that much of the Russian army only existed on paper, and that the true strength was overinflated by trickling up good news only throughout all ranks of the military.[1] Readiness was overstated. Equipment was overstated. Training was for parades, not combat. Everyone in the Russian military had assumed they'd never actually fight a real war, so they could grift and sell rations on the side.
Putin didn't realize that his military was hollowed-out when he made the call to invade, and thus everyone scrambled to fill in the gaps of their units with conscripts. That's why we're seeing an unusually high number of captured Russian forces who appear to have nearly no military training or experience. We've seen bizarre tactics that make no sense - tanks being abandoned, APCs driving with no support, etc.
It stands to reason that if we're asking "Where's the Russian Air Force?", the answer is that it may never have existed in the size we thought. IMO this is a more logical answer than trying to figure out some 3D chess strategy of why Russia wouldn't their planes during the largest invasion since WWII.
The Russian air force "exists", in that they have planes and pilots and bombs. But in what quantities and in what condition is a huge question. Furthermore, are they as good at flying in relatively contested airspace as is implied. Russia had total air superiority in Syria, Georgia, the Donbas, and the Caucasus. Ukraine has an army that actually exists and is being armed with some pretty high tech shit from the west.
> the true strength was overinflated by trickling up
When I watched HBO's excellent Chernobyl that was one of the recurring themes. Everybody is lying to their superiors and nobody wants to hear bad news and they suffer because if it. I assumed that was probably exaggerated for the sake of drama but maybe it was actually understated?
Even this recent video, which presents a bad look for their leadership, they were alright with it being public; it must be the best case, and it subtly presents a leadership structure within the Russian government that is both disorganized, and systemically fearful of Putin.
> I assumed that was probably exaggerated for the sake of drama
Communist countries were full of blatant incompetence, lying about what actually happens, mismanagement, stealing and strategic deliberate incompetence.
Just look at state of economy of communist block and why USSR failed.
Another part of this is US intelligence sources have an incentive to overstate Russia's strength. A strong scary Russia better justifies American military spending.
While both scenarios are terrifying, I don't agree that the failing state is scarier. Nuclear weapons take a lot organizational skill and competence to maintain and deploy, which gets much harder for a failing state to muster. Plus we've been through this before with the Soviet Union where a disturbing number of nukes went unaccounted for, but none managed to get deployed by terrorists.
By contrast, a functioning dictatorship means a single madman can pretty much decide to destroy humanity at any point.
> It stands to reason that if we're asking "Where's the Russian Air Force?", the answer is that it may never have existed in the size we thought. IMO this is a more logical answer than trying to figure out some 3D chess strategy of why Russia wouldn't their planes during the largest invasion since WWII.
It's not that hard to figure out. Putin is saving his planes for something big. Direct conflict with NATO being the most likely (and of course scariest) answer.
This does not necessarily mean that he wants or intends to fight NATO, just that he sees it as a strong enough possibility that he's willing to incur heavy losses in the short term in order to conserve his strength.
You might be correct to some degree. I suspect though, what played an even bigger role is that Putin and many of his higher ups, really seem to have believed this would be a very easy invasion and their troops would be welcome like liberators. Just read the gloating pre-prepared "we won" article that was released accidentally [1], it really seems like they were believing their own propaganda.
One thing I don't understand is Russia's opening missile salvos, they barely even struck at the heart of the Ukrainian Air Force. I guess you could theorize they didn't want to destroy that infrastructure in the event that the Ukrainian government rolled over, but that seems to have been a risky bet that is currently playing out.
We lost over 2000 civilians in last week on Ukraine-controlled territory.
We don't need to bust moral after 8 years of war. It's not possible to bust something 8 years straight. My FB is full of «killed by Russian», «lost in fight», etc.
You spoke at behalf of Ukrainians, but you have zero information from Ukraine. If you have facts, then list them, please.
I don't think RU has that many precision guided (cruise) missiles. The tech for those, small GPS/GLONASS/TERCOM, is post Soviet. My impression is that RU military capability kinda froze after the Soviet Union collapsed, and what "modern" stuff they do have is in very limited quantity.
This is a kind of Catch 22 situation with how to deliver those MIG-29s:
If a Polish pilot flies it to Ukraine, Russia will consider that an act of war, and possibly start bombarding Poland. If Ukrainian pilot comes to Poland and takes off from a Polish airport then again: that is an act of war.
The only possibility to deliver them without joining the war against Russia seems to be to disassemble those MIGs and send them by train/truck.
Ukraine just yesterday flew a MIG-29 back from Romania, unarmed and escorted to the border by Romania jets/from the border by armed Ukranian jets. No-one seems concerned that that's an act of war.
No one seems concerned, except the NATO Secretary General who rushed to Poland specifically to stop Polish President, Andrzej Duda from lending Polish jet fighters:
The argument that you are making is that "Allowing to use the military infrastructure, such as an airport is an act of war". How in the world is letting a Ukranian jet land and take off at an airport making less use of that airport, than giving Ukraine a jet and only letting it take off from the airport?
Well, we don't know the whole story, but the fact that it was Ukrainian jet, not a gift, could matter a lot. Those things aren't strict rules, it is all based on perception by both sides. Sending 70 fighters, as EU planned, or allowing them to operate freely from Polish airports would anger Russia much more. Which apparently isn't something NATO is willing to do right now.
EDIT: the fact that the jet was Ukrainian gives Romania plausible deniability - they can always say that the pilot wanted to fight, and took the jet against their will :)
this is the shit that will kill all of us. I feel like avoiding a larger conflict overflowing more borders is going to require perfect decision making. What you linked to is not perfect decision making.
Sending supplies is just business, no different from selling food. Allowing to use the military infrastructure, such as an airport is an act of war. It might seem weird to you, but that's how Russia would paint it.
You can have an enormous airforce on paper, but not be able to wield it in those numbers. It's possible they simply can't get enough working planes together to make a difference, and what they have working is all that they have. It's also possible that Putin is afraid of some other border being attacked and is keeping all planes for defense (though that seems rather stupid). You can't win a ground war if the enemy can indiscriminately destroy your troops, vehicles and logistics, no matter how many people you can throw into battle. Of course this did work in WW2 as the USSR sent enormous armies full of people who were often unarmed (pick up a dead mans rifle), and had Commissars behind them to shoot anyone who failed to go forward. This is no longer the case, and it's entirely possible the troops (and some leadership) simply doesn't have any desire to kill themselves in a war they care nothing about.
> Of course this did work in WW2 as the USSR sent enormous armies full of people who were often unarmed (pick up a dead mans rifle), and had Commissars behind them to shoot anyone who failed to go forward.
Almost everyone underestimating Putin.
Probably there’s more than meets the eye. For sure a lot of wishful thinking in western views.
Putin never lost a war.
Not defending him, just noting that the “good guys” don’t always win.
Or we've been overestimating Putin for the past decade and his "crafty tough guy" persona was just successful marketing. My personal opinion on this changed when I saw pictures of him sitting at the end of that long table[1] when talking to his advisors/generals.
The fact that he's that scared of COVID shatters the tough guy persona. The fact that he was seemingly ok with these pictures going public shows that he has no sense of how silly and bad this looks.
Putin's never really fought a war though, so he would be hard pressed to have won any. The conflicts Russia has engaged in during his reign have been small affairs where there was basically never any real military resistance against Russia. Each of those conflicts was fait accompli as soon as it started.
Ukraine is a different beast. Its a country with a regular army that has spent the last 8 years undergoing a rapid modernization process for said army. They have 44 million people, and lots of western support.
I think part of why Russia looks so inept is because everyone is comparing against the US.
However, the US military has the finest logistic operations in the world.
Also, there is no substitute for fighting an actual enemy. Part of the reason the US (especial Air Force and Naval Aviation) is so good is that they have actually been fighting. From Libya(Reagan), Gulf War I, Serbia, Gulf War II, Afghanistan, Libya (Obama), the US has been fighting quite a bit.
Whenever you are actually fighting an enemy, there is a learning curve. The big question is whether the sanctions and international isolation combined with the Ukrainian resistance will force Russia to back down, before they navigate that.
I have this sad, but likely true, theory that the U.S. needs to always be involved in a war to stay in practice and iron out the kinks for bigger wars.
I say this as a medium-big supporter of the US military.
The reason US army is always fighting is economic. US dollar is reserve currency of the world and thus US has almost unlimited credit.
But one important element of dollar stability is that carrier group shows up on the doorstep of those getting out of line and shows them errors of their ways. Thus there is a constant need for some pretext to deploy military somewhere.
Do you mean purely for economic reasons or a whole array of reasons and the economics are a part of it?
Securing oil fields and the Persian Gulf is more than money and oil, it’s about securing trade via maritime traffic in the gulf for liberal capitalist democracies worldwide.
And keeping oil access secure is about pure security but also keeping prices low to not disrupt economies.
A foreign affairs article had this to say before the conflict began:
>Airstrikes would not go entirely uncontested. Russia’s air force lacks experience in suppressing or destroying enemy air defenses, and it rarely uses missiles that are designed to destroy radar. As a result, Ukraine’s meager air defenses could still pose a challenge. But Ukrainian air defenses are in short supply, and they would be unlikely to provide effective cover for most of the country’s ground troops. They would be quickly overwhelmed.
>The opening air campaign would probably be short. Unlike Western militaries, which concentrate firepower in their air forces, Russia puts the bulk of its firepower in its ground forces, so it would quickly proceed to a ground campaign.
No air force, because cost-benefit isnt there. Too many things to take them out. Not enough things to drop bombs on. Dont worry, they did airstrike the
Navy doing navy things? aka floating there threatening civilians.
Army is in terrible disarray losing tons of equipment to mud. Losing even more equipment to combat. Their MREs expired 7 years ago. Their army sure is looking pathetic.
It's hard to be sure, but he is now surrounded by (ex?) multibillionnaires who have all of a sudden lost much of the ability to enjoy their airplanes, yachts, houses etc, ONLY because of voices in Putin's head telling him about his historic mission (or whatever those voices are telling him).
I think his life expectancy has gone down as of about a week ago.
>It's hard to be sure, but he is now surrounded by (ex?) multibillionnaires who have all of a sudden lost much of the ability to enjoy their airplanes, yachts, houses etc, ONLY because of voices in Putin's head telling him about his historic mission (or whatever those voices are telling him).
On paper they are still billionaires because the stock exchange was shutdown. I really don't know how much power they have exactly. I doubt they have any sort of assassination capability. Nor do I expect them to exercise this.
Ultimately this is about defunding their war. Their ability to sustain this war has a very short lifetime now. They are now excluded from the global community. The Russian people are headed into poverty.
It is rather simple, they didn't want to really destroy UAF, but were hoping after initial attack that a lot of them would surrender and switch side, as there is a lot of unhappiness in Ukraine over how they treat Russians, right wingers and pro-nazi groups with guns.
So they expected a lot of infrastructure will be available for them to take over. As we know, this didn't happen and now they have to destroy it. Honestly this is not good for Ukrainians as they will now suffer for real.
I found this site provides somewhat better analysis of situation, as well as The Hill and Breaking Points for example.
It's an internal resistance conducted by the military. In the coming days I would expect a coup, Putin's arrest(or worse), the new administration, end of war.
I seriously doubt that this would pan out. I think Putin is definitely losing support internally but the fear is still very much present. All of his political opponents are either imprisoned, exiled or dead. Some are even exiled and dead.
No one wants to lose their life going against someone so ruthless knowing they could lose their life... or their loved ones.
Russian history knows many examples of coups conducted by people from the inner circle of dictators, starting from Paul I in 1801 and ending with two coups in 1991 and 1993.
So, taking down putin from within is a plausible event.
I also wondered if coming up with enough pilots who were willing, or they could trust not to defect, was an issue. Offering $5 million per plane is a great idea.
I think this misses the point entirely. It's their entire strategy, or lack of strategy that is in question.
Small numbers of light vehicles entering towns they have not overcome...are then promptly destroyed by irregular Ukrainian forces often with improvised weapons.
Seemingly trying to take large cities without first gaining and controlling ground and surrounding areas.
Lack of attempts to destroy strategic infrastructure at the beginning - e.g. TV/broadcast, communications, bridges, rail, etc - using cruise missiles or whatever.
Unclear objectives - are they really trying to actually take Kiev or just force Ukraine into submission?
Effective use of an air-force is pointless without dealing with the above issues and more.
>Small numbers of light vehicles entering towns they have not overcome...trying to take large cities without first gaining and controlling ground and surrounding areas.
This was our strategy in Iraq -- highly mobile warfare. Marines sprinting ahead in humvees without armor. it created massive confusion and misunderstanding on where our thrust was - i think it tied up enemy resources outside of Baghdad or something. But in the long run, not capturing enemies or pacifying the areas in-between caused a lot of heartburn later; let alone the looting and lawlessness from leaving power vacuums everywhere. (humanitarian fail)
Some massive differences were air superiority, night vision, and disruption of enemy coordination. They could call-in airstrikes anytime there was a threat of armor or mortar fire. Generation Kill is a really good series showing this (it seemed like madness until i watched "The Pacific").
It's not a lack of strategy, merely an expression of that a soldier's life isn't worth sh*t in Russia.
These young enlisted conscripts are nothing but cannon fodder with their superiors hoping they can get off a shot or two before they're killed.
Pilots, being officers, are another matter entirely. I remember this Kamov Ka-40 helicopter had the ability to blow off its blades to enable the pilot to bail out with an ejection seat. There's nothing remotely like it in the U.S. arsenal.
I think the reason was, we just waltz into Kyev, get greeted as saviors and liberators, maybe shoot Zelenskyy and his circle in the head by mistake, or just make them disappear, install another friendly ruler (collaborator would be more appropriate, like Kadyrov in Chechnya) and Ukraine will be part of Russia within next few years, or end up as slave without any real autonomy like Belarus.
If that's the case, industry mostly in the east would serve much better untouched, same for rest of infrastructure. Why destroy & rebuild when you get it for free and can start draining the country immediately. Bear in mind Russia has huge demographic problems just around the corner, and smart people were running away in droves long before this.
All this - truly, hardcore naive. In whole eastern Europe currently busy with refugees efforts, and whole nations would rather risk death than be once again enslaved by them, the memories are still rather fresh.
That Russia's foreign actions are (rightfully in this and many other cases) hated as much as Hitler wasn't something leadership could grok in any way. They keep peddling these bigger Russia tales while calling in 10,000 muslim killers from Chechnya on what they claim brotherly slavic nation. You can't fail more morally in the eyes of other slavs.
I can't be objective in this topic due to coming from this oppressed region, and tyrant evil persona like Putin doesn't deserve it. Yes there are many, less powerful people like him. I would love to see them be disposed of, stripped away from wealth and power for good. Till now it was a pipe dream, same as watching some narco-baron enjoying his wealth while slowly killing everybody. Now there is at least hope that things may change, and maybe even permanently, at least a bit. And hope is a powerful thing.
> Why destroy & rebuild when you get it for free and can start draining the country immediately.
Also, assuming any of the responsible thought about this beforehand at all (which IS an assumption), they probably expected further economic sanctions of SOME sort from invading. Rebuilding costs money. Rebuilding things like high-tech fighter aircraft costs truly ridiculous amounts of money. There were plenty of reasons they would have hoped to be able to do this all on a modest budget.
> Indeed NATO certainly expected Ukrainians to just surrender.
NATO expected (and AFAICT, still expects) Ukraine to be defeated if Putin attacked and wasn't dissuaded by the resulting sanctions from pressing the attack. I don't think they were expected to just surrender.
There was a hue and cry about Ukrainians dipping bullets into salo but seeing as the Chechens got droned by Bayraktars it seems like the Turks don't mind whatever treatment the drones are getting.
Why would they? The Turkish economy is in shambles and this is amazing PR for their arms manufacturing. I’d imagine those drones will be sold out for years to come
Chechens have truly horrible reputation in east/central Europe, picture ISIS but worse. There is absolutely no sympathy to them, thanks to what they showed in Syria fighting for the same guy. I am surprised they are actually taking some of them as prisoners.
Chechens themselves had the same tragedy in Grozny. I don't believe these puppet soldiers have the sympathy of the vast majority of muslim people.
While there are many problems like treatment of african students, comments on TV channels mentioning "civilized" part of the world, and not having the public outcry for middle-eastern people(or welcoming arms for refugees), and the topic you mentioned. Anyone I talked to in Turkey supports the struggle of Ukrainian people.
Another interesting point is that Russia seems to be recruiting a lot from the Turkic people inside Russia. So Turkish drones are also hitting them. But that doesn't seem to change public opinion.
Overall, unfortunately, the Turkish people became geopolitical experts because of all the mess and tragedy around Turkey (Note to reader: Check the map if you don't know Turkey's neighbors). One visible metric is twitter conflict/OSINT account number in Turkish. Most people have a balanced view, but stopping aggression and civilian casualties comes first.
Another interesting point is that there are sanctions on some Turkish industries, based on secondary concerns and some lobbying. But, Turkey singlehandedly supported Europe's energy security/ general security(Azerbaijan, Libya, Syrian refugees), balanced Russia(Syria, Libya), supported Ukraine's defense industry long before anyone else.
Destroying bridges, rail, etc would be a huge mistake (beside maybe those leading west to NATO), as the current logistic challenges underscore. The initial blitz did target radars and airports (strategic infrastructure) to try to get air superiority, after which many more options become available. But that didn't play out. We're seeing now a transition to siege tactics; surround and generally make life miserable.
> It's their entire strategy, or lack of strategy that is in question.
So, bearing mind that I'm just shitposting on the Internet and have no military expertise, I do think that they had a strategy; based on the automated release of articles 4 days after the start of the invasion which declared that Putin had provided the "final solution to the Ukrainian problem", they really expected it to be over in four days.
Bear in mind that:
1. Ukraine has different groups with different mother tongues, like Switzerland or Belgium. The east has a lot of people who grow up speaking Russian as their home language.
2. They landed paratroops at key airports across Ukraine on day 1.
3. Ukraine government has claimed they've found significant numbers of special forces disguised as Ukrainians on the first few fays.
4. The large body of conventional forces invading on day one.
I would guess - completely "guy on the Internet" mind you - that what the strategy was is that the paratroops would get a beachhead and destroy the air force, that they and the special forces would hunt down and murder or capture all the key Ukrainian millitary and government officials in the first few days.
Meanwhile the conventional forces in the east would be "greeted as liberators", to borrow an American phrase, by Russian-speaking Ukrainians, who would provide food and fuel. Reinforcements would be flown into captured airfields. Chechen terror units would be used against serious resisters.
By the fourth day, Ukrainian resistance would be a disorganised shambles of cut-off government units, show trials of any captured members of the Ukrainian government could start so they could tell a little story about how the Jewish Ukrainian president was actually a baby-eating Nazi, and Putin could laugh off any attempts to complain as meaningless.
The paratroops were captured or killed, the Ukrainian air force kept flying or escaped to friendly countries (and are now returning), the alleged special forces got nowhere near the Ukrainian government, and Russian-speaking Ukrainians have been telling Russian troops to go away. The Chechen terror units appear to have been killed en masse.
I think they started to believe their own lies. Like a feedback loop from Putin to below, and then the same things going up again. Putin gets advised in a world created by his own lies.
It's like the queen of hearts in the Tim Burton remake of Alice in Wonderland (seems unique to this particular interpretation?). Everyone in her court has some sort of exaggerated physical feature, because she requires it. They all therefore have fake noses, chins, etc. It's all this fake world where they keep sniffing eachothers farts all day saying its perfume, and somehow a constructive feedback loop forms that takes the whole thing off thr rails.
This one is so hard for me to imagine, given Russia's long history of aerospace pride and massive military budget. The article attributes it to limited flying time compared to US/UK pilots and unfamiliarity with their latest and most advanced jets. Truly hard to comprehend how a military like Russia's could be suffering from lack of training despite a multi-year lead-up to a massive invasion.
Ukrainians shot about 30 Russian planes, so 30 experienced Russian pilots are gone. Even if they are catapulted, they cannot return to home easily, while Ukrainians can catapult, return to base, and then use a next available plane same day. It's like battle of Britain, when British pilots did the same trick against Nazi pilots.
Ukrainians shot about 30 Russian planes, so 30 experienced Russian pilots are gone
This is exactly the metric. Unlike their other assets, planes are expensive to replace and pilots take a long time to train.
Russia needs to maintain their air assets in order to defend themselves in case they get challenged that way. And they have tons of warm bodies and old hardware to throw at the situation.
Another perspective is that Russian air assets are very vulnerable to MANPADS style air-defense systems. Ukraine has received a ton of these systems from the west and are able to engage targets up to about 3 miles out. They're also vulnerable to the S300 systems the Ukrainians inherited, although its not clear how many of those remain.
Russias military budget is only slightly higher than that of the UK (61.7 billion vs 59.2 billion), even though Russia has a bit more than twice the UK population.
France and Germany aren't far behind - 52.8 billion and 52.7 billion respectively. I believe Germany recently pledged to raise it's military spending to 100 billion (a lot of flashy headlines but couldn't find details), so soon it will far outspend Russia.
You cannot compare those numbers. Cost of living is very different in Germany and the UK compared to Russia. Personnel costs make up for most of the German budget and a Russian soldier earns only a fraction of a German soldier.
While that is a factor, I can also imagine that Russia has more cost due to the size of the country and the amount of hardware they have to maintain within that budget. The other countries are a lot more compact and focused, both in terms of landmass and the amount of hardware.
Just looking at the land mass is probably misleading too. Most of the population is in the western part of Russia. As soon as you get to the mountains and Siberia there is simply not much there.
Sure, but I don’t think the person you’re replying to was forgetting this point.
Germany will have greater personnel cost, yes. In other areas, Russia will have a greater cost burden. For example, they don’t share defense resources with other nations (I.e. no. NATO equivalent).
The person you’re replying to is simply stating that Germany’s higher personnel cost does not nullify the effectiveness of relative strength of the German military versus the Russians.
>I believe Germany recently pledged to raise it's military spending to 100 billion (a lot of flashy headlines but couldn't find details), so soon it will far outspend Russia.
Not to 100 billion, by 100 billion. Euros that is.
Its easy - imagine massive, gargantuan corruption. On all levels, including the very top and going all the way to the lowest soldier. Heck, they were selling gas to Belarus civilians from their own machines while waiting just across the border during February. And then they ran out of it in Ukraine.
Can you imagine US or western Europe soldiers doing something similar en masse?
And its not just that - heavy drinking, fuck-it attitude, and suddenly called to invade the nation who was supposed to be their closest brothers?
They are sort of potemkin village kind of army. Few exceptional units (Spetsnaz), few cool technologies ie anti aircraft missiles, literally maybe 10 new Armata tanks (they found out they can't manufacture them en masse). So you see 40-50 years old tanks which Javelin can fry easily, and even clueless civilian can fire them after 30 minutes of training. You see soldiers abandoning vehicles since they have higher survability on foot. You see tank crew coming to Ukrainian police station to ask where is gas station (I call it clever way to surrender).
I think its actually very dangerous for Russia as a state right now. Showing this much weakness might motivate some neighbors. Especially China, they could run through the country all the way to Barents sea without breaking a sweat.
> Its easy - imagine massive, gargantuan corruption.
Well, it's not as if the US military industrial complex has nothing of that?
I think the problem isn't corruption alone, but the combination of corruption and all the corrupt trying hard to put their own eggs elsewhere than Russia's basket. Working with a corrupt authoritarian leader can be profitable, but you really want to have a plan B for when SHtF.
US corrupt elites have the luxury problem that if their wealth and power isn't secure in the US, it probably isn't very secure anywhere else either. So they have to take just a little care not shit where they eat (too much), and maybe sponsor a few museums and stuff, robber baron style.
I think you underestimate the extent of corruption in Russia. The US doesn't even come remotely close. You can look up corruption indexes, Russia is near most corrupt, US somewhere in the bottom quartile iirc. A quick example from my industry - roughly 1/3 of the ~USD $3 billion spent on the new Russian spaceport is unaccounted for (stolen). I assure you that's many orders of magnitude worse than the contracts in play at Cape Canaveral.
A good (extremely depressing) film to watch is "Leviathan" (2014).
First, I was mostly thinking about historical corruption in the US, i.e. in the age of Robber Barons, which was really incredibly bad.
I agree there's probably less of the "money just unaccounted for" type of corruption in the US (though it does happen, especially in connection with wars and intelligence agencies), and certainly less petty bribes. But that may just be a symptom of more organized corruption, so that it isn't necessary to let to many lower instances have a cut. In short, there may be more legal ways to divert public trust to private gain, so that the petty sort is just pointlessly risky.
If you had lived in a country that is corrupt at all levels of industry, government, and business you would know that the US is practically pure as driven snow. In the US there is relatively plenty money to go around and even the poor typically live better than in a lot of countries "average standard of living) (barring the poorest 5% or so). I have lived in such a country for a few years and it. is. everywhere. -Everyone- wants a bribe or kickback.
In some branches of psychology, they use term "apoptosis" as a metaphor for widespread self-destruction [1], because such a collapse in social teamwork appears to almost perfectly mirror programmed cell death - as if social collapse of one society to allow the takeover of another more "fit" society is built in to our inherent social or genetic code. Historically speaking, showing such weakness would lead to mass genocide, leadership takeover, cultural changes, and other unpalatable war crimes. We don't need to be brutal cavemen anymore, but feels we're enabling Russia to torture itself indefinitely while not letting it completely collapse and rebuild a more fair society, because they have nuclear weapons and it would be the incorrect opinion to acknowledge and fix Russia's failures as a state, society, culture, military, and economic structure? Why can't we read the writing on the wall and fix the world's number 1 danger - the apoptosis of Russia?
China won’t invade anyone. They haven’t had any battles in a long time. They can just take over with soft power since Russia is in a extremely weak position in a few months.
A policing operation in one of their “own” cities against unarmed people and dumping a bunch of land into the sea/intimidating fishermen. Like I said they don’t have any combat ready troops. It’s basically all LARPing with a big budget. Which we should all be glad about.
>I think its actually very dangerous for Russia as a state right now. Showing this much weakness might motivate some neighbors. Especially China, they could run through the country all the way to Barents sea without breaking a sweat.
To which I say: Russia has ~half of the world's nuclear arsenal. (The US has ~half, the rest of the nuclear states are mere footnotes by # of nukes, relying on the fact that no one really needs more than about a dozen).
Possibly. But the exchange would occur on Russian soil. China is more than capable of covertly supporting separatists. Hell, it might not even have to. Just prime the pump and then let the West take over.
> Especially China, they could run through the country all the way to Barents sea without breaking a sweat.
The thing is though, is there any reason to believe the PLA would be in a much different shape? The last wars the Chinese fought in were decades ago, and the performance was pretty poor. So we don't have any real world idea of how that army would perform - it could suffer from poor morale, stupid tactics, lack of coordination, no logistics, or it could be superbly trained with great equipment.
I disagree, they have used their airforce extensively in Syria with precision guided bombs, and I'd be very surprised if that didn't help the pilots gain a lot of experience too. All those reasons might have explained a lower intensity air presence but not the outright absence of russian planes. I think it's mostly due to public perception because air strikes, no matter how precise, cause a lot of collateral damage, especially when used in cities.
Outside of cities, where alternatives to air strikes are viable, you can still see a lot of russian helicopter and artillery action.
This is what the article argues. That it is possible that they used up most of their precision guided bombs in Syria and are mostly left with unguided munitions.
I'm not sure I'd agree because they haven't even used their ballistic or cruise missiles in any significant number either. And we know they have a lot, lot more of those even if we just count Soviet stock. To me that indicates that there is something more to it than just lacking the munition itself.
> they haven't even used their ballistic or cruise missiles in any significant number either
Those need targeting. And the article mentions a lack of targeting pods. (UkrAF is largely functional because the initial volley missed many air fields, planes and radar systems.)
This increasingly looks like the Russian military procured shiny, expensive kit from cronies and then neglected to equip them.
I think the area they lack experience is closed air support. Ground troops can't direct air support on enemy targets consistently and accurately. Not that many countries can do that effectively.
Syrian enemies did not have nearly the level of anti-aircraft (and more incoming from NATO countries) that Ukrainians have. I think they are just trying to keep irreplaceable fighters and bombers intact at the cost of ground forces. Russia know that in a war of attrition they can outlast Ukraine although it will cost them more than they thought now. I think they gambled based on what happened in Crimea and the "contested" regions of Ukraine.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 431 ms ] threadWell, given the deplorable state of their ground units, I wouldn't rule it out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system
a very good technology that the Soviet Union developed which punches above its weight in situations like the Ukraine war because the mobile radars are hard to suppress with these methods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen...
I have seen a huge number of Buks in various conditions in video footage from the war, one of them was scurrying around the 'suburban' areas of Kiev. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the early missile hits on residential buildings were something like this that failed to lock on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile
Ukraine has a lot of Buks, it has a handful of these too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system
on paper those are better than the Buk but Ukraine doesn't have so many and I think the Buk is a "cheap and cheerful" convivial weapon like the AK-47 that does great when exported.
(Both the Buk and S-300 are a lot like the US Patriot missile system in that they are comprised of a number of mobile units such as command posts, radar, missile launchers, etc. The Buk however has a configuration where the radar and missile launcher are colocated on the same vehicle and I'd guess that configuration works really well under rough conditions with less trained crews.)
That or Russian missile attacks.
A case of the height map not being updated correctly in the computer's memory? The Russians seem to be sloppy all over the place, so it wouldn't surprise me.
All this lightens my mood, since it's obvious the Russians wouldn't last two months against NATO forces.
To borrow his twitter bio as an introduction
> PhD student @warstudies (Department of War Studies at Kings College). Senior Fellow @FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Institute). Previously @USMC (US Marine Corp), @ColumbiaSIPA (Columbia School of International and Public Affairs), @CentreAST (Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies), and @AlfaFellowship. Focused on Russian defense policy.
To imply that they're just pulling in random people is flat out wrong. This is a person who has been studying Russia from a military standpoint for many years.
And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent. There's an active war. If history has taught us anything, psyops is as sure as death, in war.
That explains the anonymous officials not agreeing with this stance. That doesn't explain the non-government experts not agreeing that this is the reason though. They don't have any special knowledge and wouldn't be telling the Russians anything they didn't already know.
> And, there's a strong possibility that we're experiencing some psyops here, to make the Russians appear incompetent
There's probably a degree of this, but from what I've seen it also seems to be legitimately the case that they are somewhat incompetent.
Besides which, the Russian's letting that psyop succeed, would itself be direct evidence of incompetence.
Inside Russia or China, psyops is muting whoever says something you don't like, and deciding on and disseminating the message of the day.
Outside of Russia or China, that looks very different, with everyone opining on your message whenever they feel like it, in addition to virality being a huge component of message reach. That's a very different skillset to navigate successfully.
Given their unencrypted radio communication they have done a fair effort to support that idea themselves.
For example, saying "shoot here" then having a tank round go through the wall 5 seconds later wouldn't benefit from encryption.
Of course it would. Otherwise:
* the enemy could analyse your strategy and tactics and predict your approach; and worse:
* the enemy can impersonate command, say "approach through there" and have the tank go through an anti-tank ditch
There's no excuse for unencrypted military communications. One would think the Russians would have learned their lesson from freaking Tannenberg a century ago, but it seems not.
Encryption won't encrypt the shell going through the wall, which could just as easily be analyzed with the constellation of spy satellites focused on the region.
> the enemy can impersonate command, say "approach through there" and have the tank go through an anti-tank ditch
This would be uncoded communications that would put them at a disadvantage. If that did happen, then yes it would be incompetence. Is there any evidence that this is happening? I find it unlikely that they would believe any voice coming over the line, considering what you're saying is an "attack vector" that has been present and known for, literally, the last 131 years.
Do you have anything that supports this very negative view of the intelligence of the average Russian soldier/commander?
it was not a critique of intelligence, if anything it was a critique pointing out the failure of high-level RU military planners. what kind of competent general staff lets [at least some] of their battalion-and-below radio comms go out into open frequencies that are easily listened to, transmitted on and also easily jammed by consumer-grade cheap chinese radios?
that is madness. it is incompetent.
(edit: for grammar)
One that is part of a military that has old radio equipment (maybe from competently allocating funding to something more important), so they have no other choice. I'm sorry, but that doesn't require incompetence. Incompetence would be if they let it unexpectedly impact their invasion. Competence for an invasion doesn't require encryption (see Crimea). An encrypted radio channel makes things easier, but it may not be required for the invasion of Ukraine, which is the context here.
The definition of competence: the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.
The purpose of this war isn't to unlock all achievements with a high score, it's to take Ukraine. They're still progressively taking Ukraine, and they've only sent in 1/3 of the forces from the border (last numbers I saw).
Yes it's madness.
It's not a strong possibility, it's a 100% guarantee.
Aside from big, trivially disproven announcements ("This side now controls such and such city"), you're not going to see an accurate picture of literally anything in this conflict until months, if not years after the fact, when historians will pour over, and fit together first-hand accounts and records.
In the meantime, parts of the picture may be accurate, but nobody here has any idea which parts are true, which are propaganda, or what particular purpose that propaganda serves.
Definitely. You're not going to hear about the encounters where the Russians smoke the Ukrainians and they have serious loss of life/equipment or don't come back at all.
Not that there's not a lot of organic sentiment around the world, but Ukraine seems to have a very good PR corps pushing news of their victories and memes about the situation. And unlike a lot of these attempts, they aren't "how do you do fellow kids" type shit where it's super obvious.
Exhibit A: the Ghost of Kiev. Regardless of whether he exists or not, he's a great case study in propaganda.
FTA: the issue is that Russia made a huge show of force at the start of the invasion but has apparently held back from actually using much of it (by air or ground). This war could have been over the day it started if Russia had used maximal force, and the conservative approach their actually using maximizes risks and casualties.
And that's what has the experts confused: they can't figure out why Russia is going with this strategy, given the overwhelming technological and numerical superiority of the invasion force and their apparent willingness to accept casualties as the cost of conquering Ukraine.
It doesn't appear to be cost, because the invasion has "cost" Russia hundreds of billions.
It doesn't appear to be casualties/morale, because Russia has suffered 500+ casualties in 3 days (its worst losses since Afghanistan), and is still invading.
It doesn't appear to be doctrine, because their actions don't match what is known of Russian ground or air doctrine.
And so experts are trying to figure out what calculus went into Russia's invasion planning (assuming there was a coherent strategy going in, which is not a given in the post-Trump world).
Russia eventually wants to bombard Kiev with heavy weapons like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9A52-4_Tornado
which can use ammunition at an absolutely insane rate. It takes time to move this stuff into place and more time to take the ammunition in, set up resupply paths, etc.
So Russia attacks Kiev with a small force with light weapons, some Spetsnaz, mostly to keep the fight away from the main body of the force which will strike hard when it is ready.
I'd you assume this is true, what they are doing make complete sense.
They are.
You are just listening to the wrong articulation of their intentions.
> They said multiple times they don't want Ukraine,
They have said multiple times that they do want Ukraine, view it's separation from Russia as a crime against Russia and Russians committed by those in the past with control over Russia in the form of the Soviet Union, and Russian state media even released than silently deleted a premature victory announcement for the current invasion declaring the establishment of a new union state of all the Russias (Russia [Great Russia], Ukraine [Little Russia]< and Belarus.)
Now, that's not what they emphasize to the international community, but they have been saying it.
Do you have more information about this?
> A Russian state-run news agency prematurely published an article that said Russia has taken back Ukraine.
> "Ukraine has returned to Russia," said the article, which ran on RIA Novosti and has since been taken down. "The West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe."
That's very reasonable.
https://www.npr.org/2022/01/10/1071766987/u-s-russia-dicuss-...
> Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov emerged from the nearly eight hours of talks and declared, "There are no plans or intentions to attack Ukraine." He went on to say, "There is no reason to fear some kind of escalatory scenario."
That was, quite clearly, a lie, as they'd already massed 100,000 troops near Ukraine.
It seems that whether this succeeds or fails it'll actually increase their land borders with NATO.
That simply doesn’t compute.
Your selection of what to believe as the honest truth is pretty telling.
Denazification of the jewish russian speaking president.
Lawrow: Ukraine wants to aquire nukes and russia must prevent this. Propably trolling.
Half hearted false flags operations: Bombed car where the suspect was arrested the day before. Bombed out building with months old trees in it....
The aforementioned NATO ambitions of ukraine. ukraine was denied membership 14 years ago and things look even more impossible now with the territorial conflict about the crimea. Paradoxically russia is making ukraines medium term NATO membership more likely by solving the crimea conflict.
Russia wants to unite all Rus and everything else is just a smokescreen. Putin has given some rather 19th century speeches to that effect and there was this article that was published and then quickly taken down in some state owned newspaper (i think) https://thefrontierpost.com/the-new-world-order/ Pretty scary stuff.
Because there was a much greater absence of incoherent strategies by political and military leaders in the world prior to Trump being president of one specific country? No real fan of the man but the need to cram in a Trump-hate reference for nearly any context sometimes becomes absurd.
Though you are right in that there are huge similarities between the two campaigns: in both cases, it appears that the executive leader ignored the advice of his military advisors to launch disastrous military campaigns that actually ended up hindering the non-military objectives behind those campaigns.
What? Putin managed to force his vastly overwhelming forces on small countries with small and badly equipped armies like Chechnya, Syria, Georgia. And we don't know how much does he really do.
Hitler presided over, and even helped with the planning of, one of the most brilliant campaigns against overwhelming forces ( the invasion of Benelux and France). His army had tremendous luck, the French were thoroughly incompetent and prepared for all the wrong things, but still, it was a massive military success which was at least partly due to Hitler. That's how he got it in his head he's a brilliant strategist, which really went to his head after the initial Soviet counterattack ( when his orders were successful), and the rest is history.
But that aside, my original comment, despite having been downvoted, doesn't seem at all off base: Why in the world even bother to mention Trump except out of pure kneejerk emotional need in the context of unsound military leadership on the world stage. Poor invasion planning certainly existed long before he became president of the U.S. and the current disaster essentially has nothing to do with him or his lack/presence of military leadership skills.
But I'm not sure how it maps to observable absense of air force. Prolonging the conflict will obviously cause more civilian deaths and suffering.
Conservative western intelligence estimates actually have this number at over 2000 this morning (3/1) [0]. They are losing whole battalions by the day, and the real nasty urban warfare hasn't even begun. It's an absolute bloodbath that would never even conceivably be tolerated for a moment by any other modern military on earth.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/us/politics/russia-ukrain...
Because this isn't the intended strategy, but rather then resultant strategy.
Modern Russia seems to suffer from the same weaknesses as the USSR: garbage-in, garbage-out. If you staff an entire bureaucracy (including your military command structure) with Yes-Men, you get "Yes" responses.
When the question is "Are we prepared for the invasion?"
When the question is "Will we be able to supply our ground forces?"
When the question is "Will we be able to achieve air superiority rapidly?"
And because that's how hierarchies work, you believe the "Yes" you hear. And make your strategic plans on the basis of it being true.
Consequently, Russia appears to have built an entire invasion plan on a not-insignificant number of lies about their own forces, as communicated by their own mid-level leadership.
Imho, that explains things pretty simply and fully.
But the reason for the "confusion" (the "stumped" in the title) is that Russia has not historically operated this way under Putin (though it did operate this way under his predecessor). Basically, nothing is happening the way it has happened before (under Putin), and this appears to be a "new normal" (under Putin).
To start with, the yes-men problem means significant bad news is often buried not dealt with. It also results in the people who are the best at bs'ing and political manuevering being the ones who rise in the ranks. Your officer corps ends up being filled with people who did not optimize for military competency. Indeed General Shogyu, the Russian Minister of Defense, actually doesn't have a military background.
The corruption comes in with logisitical support. With significant levels of corruption you'll find that the amount of parts, munitions, fuel are not what you thought they were. Then you'll also probably have problems with the condition of the stuff you do have.
All of those things damage morale, competency, readiness, you name it. So when you actually have to go to war, you might find drastic shortfalls in battlefield performance.
Putin assumed all of Ukraine would roll over like Crimea. He has underestimated the people of Ukraine.
He attacked in winter assuming it would be over in two days. Now his already-low-morale forces face winter. I don't care if they are equipped and Russian and "used to war". This won't be WWI where you can build bunkers and hide in there. If you occupy a house, the local populace will email someone and you'll be a target of portable missile infantry.
He doesn't seem to have a plan B.
In theory, with good arms supply from the West (which is RIGHT OVER THE BORDER, this isn't Afghanistan that is 5000 miles away), the Ukrainian populace will get progressively better armed, more experienced (this is probably resulting in the training of a million or more Ukrainians to be effective soldiers), and more motivated.
If I were the US/NATO, I would be training and equipping as many Ukrainians as want it, and there should be millions of willing soldiers. This is the opportunity to produce a very dangerous military power right across the border from Russia. You get to breathe down the neck of the Belarus puppet strongman. And it might destroy Putin's regime by weakening him.
Putin also seems to have underestimated how much Ukraine hates him personally. I know no Ukrainians, but I suspect they are sick and tired of him threatening him and are spoiling for a fight.
The danger to Putin is that the US could equip and train and season a millions-strong Ukrainian army that sees a very unmotivated Russian army, repulses them, and then counter invades Russia. Now that is unlikely given nuclear deterrent and the like, but it is within the realm of possibility, especially if elements of Russia's army hint they are amenable to regime change and will refuse to nuke.
I doubt it's personal. Russia has dominated Ukraine over the centuries. Stories of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis in WWII are true enough; but at the time, Ukraine was ruled by Russia, which only a decade previously had imposed a famine on Ukraine that killed millions. Unsurprisingly, many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis as liberators.
Have you seen what they have done to Mariupol and Kharkiv the last few days? Maybe this was the original plan, but with that botched there seems to be no consideration for damage to civilians.
Several reasons might also be simultaneously true. Some simple examples: Russia might be testing NATO. Russia might not want to escalate in certain ways. There have been many countries whose leaders want to minimize the numbers they kill, while still killing many people. Russia might not want to reveal otherwise unknown capabilities. They might be preparing their air to strike elsewhere, possibly unrelated to Ukraine. There might be a revolt inside Russia's military. And so forth. But, what's likely? Maybe they just don't want to kill everyone or create dissent.
Potentially hostile assets require matching defensive stationing, even if they aren't doing anything aggressive. Fighters in Murmansk / Severomorsk aren't in Ukraine.
"Fleet in being" works for air forces too.
Putin called it a "special operation." Use of the term "war" in reference to this action has been banned in Russia. This secret war aspect may have had practical effects on command and control. It is possible that by not declaring this more than a limited special action, Putin's deployment options are actually limited.
Pretty crazy to think about.
"The Norden [used] an analog computer that continuously recalculated the bomb's impact point based on changing flight conditions, and an autopilot that reacted quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects."
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight
The odd man out, if you will, is inertial nav, which has more in common with dead reckoning.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3865/this-is-likely-wh...
Ironically, the last one I touched was a piece of donated Russian equipment, intended for spacecraft use, with no manual.
I suspect that the engineers you know are more computer science "engineers" than people who went through a traditional engineering core.
The ABET mechanical and electrical engineering curricula combined would give you all the skills a team needed (perhaps with the aid of a physicist and chemist or two) to build this system.
That we have dissolved the word "engineer" to mean "ad salesman at scale" doesn't mean the traditional engineers aren't out there.
I'm not sure I've seen a calculus course that skipped those (granted, it's been more than a decade since I looked at calculus courses). They certainly seem to still be within the remit of the FE - ECE exam.
But even so, my calc for engineering classes suffered from basically the same problems of focus. It was frequently hard to tell what was really important vs what was an interesting sidetrack I would never use again. Which is why I distinctly remember a number of my engineering classes having week long math refreshers as the first week of class for things like Laplace transforms/etc or a math refresher TA lead study groups the prof would strongly suggest people attend at the beginning if they couldn't solve some basic math problems written on the board the first day of class. Where I went, the first week or so was add/drop and many of the professors would toss in a "prereq" quiz to scare people into dropping who weren't strong enough in the prereqs as another method. And being an engineering class grades weren't "given". For some classes it was well known that there were going to be a lot of C's and D's because the prof wasn't going to dumb down his material if you couldn't keep up because they were believers in normal distributions (and I remember a physics professor who would show the distribution for tests/etc) and that A's really meant you were excelling.
We've strongly disincentivized gaining mid-level expertise on hard engineering.
One thing I realised as a graduate student designing RF PCBs and digital circuits was that the debugger for reality sucks. It's really frustrating to be faced with a problem where you just can't get "more information by recompiling with debug flags" and can't easily (or reversibly!) change the system to make it easier to understand. Totally different skillset, and requires a different method of thinking (frankly, at times, with a lot more thought).
The Trident 2 submarine missile has a gyroscope in it that costs almost as much as the nuclear warhead because it is so resistant to drift that it can be spun up and locked on in port and maintain its position when the submarine is at sea.
If you tried INS with a smart phone or wiimote the errors in velocity estimation will build up quickly and you'll get terrible drift.
In the case of the spatial computing hoop though you know the hoop never gets far away from the user so you can damp the D.C. component of the velocity, work in coordinates relative the user's center of gravity and never notice any drift in the x or y coordinates. (I don't like damping the vertical so much but I think I can live with it.)
nah fam, we've got it so much easier. You should kick up your feet and enjoy it, or you'll drive yourself crazy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder
The story of Radar on the ground is well known, but the story of systems like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H2S_(radar) (so named apparently because it was a smell that no one had discovered before) is not so well known.
Similarly a lot of these British efforts were more at risk to their own commanders that the Germans at the beginning, because the engineers were having to go through utterly ridiculous hoops to justify basic physics to their superiors. Sometimes their scientific superiors...
https://youtu.be/GJCF-Ufapu8 is a very very good documentary about this kind of thing. Made before the scientists were dead, so lots of gossip.
Randall and Boot should be known by more people, but magnetrons are not as awesome as the nuclear bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#Prisoner_of_war
The Russian military is organized around a land defense of their homeland since they don't have the natural barriers the U.S. has (e.g. they last got invaded in 1941, we last got invaded in 1812.)
You might think they'd invest in fixed SAM systems but mobile SAM systems are so more survivable in a war because the radar for a SAM is highly visible. You really want to hide those systems in terrain and ambush planes going by.
Systems like that are most effective when they operate in a networked mode together with AWACS airplanes like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_A-50
which use a "look down" pulse doppler radar which can see cruise missiles, UAVs and other low-flying threats. This is a great complement to the radar on a Patriot missile battery which is optimized to ballistic missile threats. Russia's latest S-500 system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-500_missile_system
has crazy long range, it competes with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...
as an anti missile missile system but also it can (try to) take out a distant AWACS airplane with a direct shot.
The Russians DO NOT want an enemy to have air superiority over them anywhere.
At the very least the Patriot SAM should be redesigned to allow for vertical launching to allow shooting in all directions. If you point Patriot one way and you get ambushed from behind you're basically caught with your pants down.
At the very least you'd need four Patriot missile launchers pointing in all directions to prevent this scenario.
I find this puzzling since Greece, also a NATO member, also purchased Russian S-300 systems but weren't penalized for it.
There are a myriad of versions of the S-300, from the original SA-10 introduced in the late 70's to the newest MPU version.
In my opinion it is because the American way of fighting a war doesn’t need it. Let say there is a troublesome country who would want to fly airplanes to shoot at American troops. The war plans against such a threat would start with two steps: 1st supress their air defences. 2nd gain full air dominance.
Supression of air defences is a polite way to say that they pulverize anything which can shoot US airplanes from the ground or even detect US airplanes using a radar.
Gaining full air dominance is a polite way to say that they aim to pulverize all enemy airplanes, runways, taxiways, fueling equipment and maintenance infrastructure.
If that is your method of operation why would you need mobile, survivable air defenses. People who routinely plan on destroying clouds (the source of rain) don’t need an umbrella.
AEGIS is an integrated, networked system; multiple sensors on multiple platforms (including AWACS) collaborate to detect and hit targets.
There was an AEGIS-equipped ship either in the Black Sea, or trying to get in through the Bosphorus (now closed to naval traffic). The presence of AEGIS ships in the Black Sea would be enough to explain the non-appearance of the Russian airforce.
It's called "controls engineering", and there are plenty of talented people in the field. But you are correct that people who sought a career in websites and cellphones have never heard of it.
(edit: s/cellphones/cellphone apps/)
The Russian Buks also seem to be having a bad time against the Bayraktars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baykar_Bayraktar_TB2#/media/Fi...
look at the shape of the tail, that thing doesn't have a single right angle to send radio waves straight back at the radar.
Why? Small radar signature?
Buks are ideal for taking down a big jet aircraft flying at 10000+ ft.
I had a quick chuckle at that. It reminds me of an old joke: a bullet has your name on it, a hand grenade is addressed "to whom it may concern", and a mortar shell is posted general delivery.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIM-92_Stinger
The Stinger is deadly against helicopters and fixed wing aircraft in a close air support role. It also is good for sniping at aircraft that are taking off and landing.
Against high altitude bombers and fighter aircraft though it does nothing. With modern precision weapons an aircraft like the B-52 can fly high and have individual munitions be targeted with GPS or laser so it can cause a lot of hurt to ground troops and be out of reach of the Stinger.
Starting in WW2 and moving forward each side took a very different evolutionary path in terms of air power and air defense. The west relied far more on combat air craft for air defense because that's what worked on the western front. The soviets had a very different experience in the war and had to fight while being under constant attack from German airpower through most of the war. So they focused on giving their army its own air defense capability.
Fast forward 80 years and western militaries will have a few SAM systems like the larger patriot and the Stringer MANPADS but will primarily rely on fighters to clear the skies. While the Russians have a SAM for every situation and a much smaller tactical air force. The west has also since Vietnam spent a lot of effort on defeating Soviet style SAM systems with improved SEAD tactics and equipment whereas it was never a concern for the Russians because there isn't much in the way of SAMs to suppress.
For those reasons you end up with the ironic twist of Russian SAMs being especially effective against Russian aircraft because they didn't prepare to counter their own systems. They DO have anti-radiation missiles and strike aircraft but not as many as the west and their doctrine is not nearly as well practiced.
And since there are only so many carriers, naval aviation also can't be assumed.
Consequently, SAMs are prioritized, compared to the army or air force.
Because if not, they're launching from Okinawa or Guam.
And they don't show up instantly hundreds of miles from there, at the ship's location.
The other reason is if things go south and the US/EU decides Putin is bluffing on the nukes, they'll for sure wish they had it because NATO aircraft would color the sky gray.
Is there something particular about the camouflage on those buks?
Just saw a video where they blew the leg off a civilian that was just standing in the road to block their advance.
You had a CBS* commentator straight up saying this is different than Middle East wars since Kyiv is a " civilized city".
That said, I think much of Russia's restraint is due to their end goal. Ukraine's Russian backed president was outted in a coup back in 2014. The new pro West leadership decided to go dancing with John McCain.
This entire conflict could of been avoided if we didn't keep trying to expand NATO. I know I'm not enlisting if the Russians invade Poland tomorrow, but the existence of NATO implies I am.
It's not hard to imagine if Haiti had a US backed leader, who was removed in a coup and then replaced with a pro Russia / pro China president. Now imagine China and Russia announcing plans for various military bases on Haiti. The Russians could finally have a warm water port.
In no universe would America accept Haiti having a right to its own foreign policy. We don't want anyone else playing in our backyard. To be clear, this doesn't justify a stronger country imposing it's will upon a weaker one.
This is worth a read.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars
* CBS not CNN
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm
Like I said, I'm not enlisting if the Russians invade Poland. If individual American citizens want to a join a Polish foreign legion, that's fine. Maybe the State Department can create a list of approved foreign legions American citizen can join.
Then your free to sign up on your own accord.
Or are you saying that you just don't believe in NATO, you would like the US not to have mutual defense alliances at all, and the expansion of NATO is completely irrelevant to your feelings about NATO?
Poland and Hungary have done autocratic things I don't agree with, but their governments seem to come much closer to following the will of the people then they would if they were again inside Russia's sphere of influence, and I think bringing them inside NATO was good for them.
I'm not sure whether it was a good maneuver strategically, but I'm also not sure it wasn't.
I'm not enlisting for anything short of America actually getting invaded. During the Vietnam War anyone with a bit of money could get deferments. Those are what I call smart men. I feel absolutely no obligation to die in a foreign conflict.
Providing logistic and selling arms is more than fine, but getting directly involved is a completely different matter.
CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D'Agata, actually.
> It's not hard to imagine if Haiti had a US backed leader, who was removed in a coup and then replaced with a pro Russia / pro China president. Now imagine China and Russia announcing plans for various military bases on Haiti. The Russians could finally have a warm water port.
> In no universe would America accept Haiti having a right to its own foreign policy.
Uh, you know this actually happened in a different Caribbean island state and, while there was a bit of a dispute about nuclear weapons that resulted in both alliances pulling them back from each others borders in a quid pro quo, and a variety of covert and sponsored-third-party actions, the US never committed it's military to an all out assault to displace the Soviet-backed regime, which still exists and is still closely associated with Russia even after the fall of the USSR, a geopolitical alignment outlasting the notional ideological one.
What nuclear weapons were being placed in Ukraine? Russia's only argument is that "someday maybe, perhaps, it could possibly happen".
Ukraine is not the formerly-Soviet-backed and still Russia-friendly Caribbean island state being referenced in the piece you quote.
Other than the unfortunate Haitians, who have suffered enough already, it is hard to imagine why a vaguely democratic decision by Haiti to become a Russian ally would meet with more than a collective yawn unless Russia planned to station intermediate range nuclear missiles there or something. Russia has plenty of allies in the area already.
The idea that the U.S. wouldn't "let" Haiti or Cuba or Venezuela have their own foreign policy is ridiculous. It does and they do.
Edit: Just to make it clear, I actually do not believe that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is due to the expansion of Nato (and even if it was it would be completely unjustified) it is due to Putin's megalomania. That doesn't mean we should forget that the US has been extremely aggressive about protecting their interests even by force and by violating international law. There is a reason why they are the country which has been involved in the most wars since WWII
The only way your hypothetical analogy would make sense is if Russia/China spent decades trying to improve economic relationships with the US, and the US took advantage of those overtures while maintaining an aggressive military posture. At that point, I think most of the world we be sympathetic with installing a pro Russia/China regime in Haiti.
This is really not a good take. Ukrainians didn't overthrow their government because of NATO expansion. They overthrew their government because it was a corrupt pile of shit that didn't credibly represent their interests. And make no mistake, Putin has always seen Ukraine as in integral and inseparable part of Russian culture. He was never going to allow them to govern themselves, NATO expansion or not.
Um... Cuba?
When was eastern Ukraine (ethnic Russians) going to be voting on leaving Ukraine?
Anyone wondering how Putin got into power may want to research how the New York bankers and Clintons tried to install Boris Berezovsky in Russia.
I also am not sure that war would be avoided if NATO didn't expand. Putin and Russia have made statements that suggest a desire to grow their influence over former USSR countries, and those countries resisted by joining NATO or ousting Russian backed leadership.
Syrian cities were civilized, too.
A nations per capita income has nothing to do with how it's people deserve to be treated.
This is probably the absolute only thing where I think Russia is being unfairly characterized. We'll see though as more intel comes in and if they start unloading on the cities. Possibly holding them to a high standard now, will keep them in check as they get more frustrated.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-molo...
"That would have been "the logical and widely anticipated next step, as seen in almost every military conflict since 1938," wrote the RUSI think-tank in London"
The US may just as well have dropped 10 more nukes and it wouldn't have changed anything. The Japanese didn't care whether it took a 1.000 bombs to destroy a city or a single one. Even more so, since they didn't know anything about the radioactive fallout and long-term effects. To them, it was just a bigger bomb.
It's noted that it's not clear how much the atomic bombings influenced the decision to surrender, versus the near-simultaneous declaration of war by the USSR on Japan. Furthermore, by the time Japan surrendered, it was clear that Japan had already thoroughly lost. Recall that similar bombing campaigns against the UK (Battle of Britain) and Germany utter failed to bring those nations any closer to surrender.
In any case, compared to the actual theorists like Giulio Douhet who were, before World War II, arguing that attacking cities would cause the will of the nations to collapse before they fully mobilized, the actual results fell far short of the theorists.
My understanding is that communications between Hirohito and Stalin indicate that Japan was attempting to begin negotiation of a total surrender after Midway and that Truman's diary eludes to this moment. The main argument I've seen to contradict this is that they don't believe Japan wasn't actually going to accept a full surrender at this point.
1) They do not believe they can, so are not trying.
2) They believe they could, but are choosing not to.
3) They tried, but, for some reason that's not currently clear and isn't evident in battlefield losses, failed. (this is probably the least likely and also the most grave—it suggests severe problems with their command structure)
Whichever's the case, it's a real head-scratcher and is the main reason this isn't going how most folks thought it would.
This is what my money is on.
Sending ground forces in without establishing air superiority is ludicrous, for reasons that we are seeing now. I guess we have a good idea where the military coup will originate.
With Europe closing its airspace there aren't many valid approach paths into Ukraine, or ways to get out of Ukraine should things go south. Russia has few stealth aircraft. In the 1991 gulf war, 60's era Soviet SA-2 missiles were able to defend Baghdad against non-stealth aircraft despite weeks of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses(SEAD) strikes.
A MIG-29 costs ~20 million dollars new.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_Q_Strike
Europe only contacts the western border. Russian aircraft can approach from the north (Russia and Belarus), south (Black Sea) and east (Russia).
That being said however stealth aircraft are not cheap to maintain at all.
In reality it appears that Russia had a big problem with "ghost units" and rapidly tried to fill their invasion force with conscripts in the weeks before the invasion began. It's why we're seeing so many ill-equipped soldiers and awful tactics where tanks/APCs are driving solo through fields.
My guess is that they have, correctly, anticipated that mass casualties of white civilians would play very badly internationally and domestically.
e: I'm downvoted.. for what? It's obvious that the ethnicity of the victim matters for both domestic and international perception, all you need to do is look at a bit of media coverage of reporters bemoaning that this is happening to "blue eyed, blond haired" people or in the "civilized world." There is a different standard for what sort of casualties are considered acceptable.
Just because a talking head or two makes those claims does not mean it is all of the sudden the truth. If Russia was worried about the looks of white civilian casualties, they wouldn't have invaded Ukraine. By the way, how many news reporters didn't make the claim that people only care about this because blue eyed/blonde haired people are involved?
Maybe Westerners care more about the Ukrainian situation because Ukraine was by and large a peaceful, lawful country until the war started. Do you think the western response would have been a little different if there was a pre-existing civil war in Ukraine, and Russia stepped in to try to turn the tide for one of the factions?
Also do tell what was the existing civil war in Iraq?
The guardian had an article about some of the comments made by journalist and politicians and there is no other way then to say they are racist.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/civili...
If Westerners only care about blonde hair blue eyed people, why did no one care about the Ukrainian war before 2 weeks ago?
Your link has, I think, 4 people who make a claim about why the West cares about the war. Is there a reason you put so much weight on those 4 people, but not on the thousands of other journalists covering the situation who aren't making those claims? Did you know a single one of those people before hearing their coverage of the war?
I assume that Russia doesn't want the same result in a neighbouring country.
Slav fellowship does not work in wars. No fellowship works in wars.
Historically combatants have treated their opponents differently based on race and existing cultural attitudes. Don't see why it would be any different this time around.
Huh? when have that ever been true? European religious wars have been huge bloodsheds, communist regimes routinely genocided their own (often quite homogenous) populations, Lebanon's civil war saw neighbors shooting at each other.
The truth of the matter is : when people want to fight, they will find something that makes their enemies different and alien, because it's uncomfortable to imagine yourself in the place of the dead body that was previously a living human.
Race and Blood just so happen to be very convenient to latch on, because they're immutable (for now) genetic characteristics that make the gulf between you and your enemies look huge, a very desirable property in a dehumanization tactic. When people don't have those, they start latching on less immutable but nonetheless difficult-to-change things like religion, language and culture. And when people don't have those either, they start latching onto who their enemies voted for in the last election or their stance on <insert pet issue>, which are very mutable but also very numerous and can always be found and used as basis for dehumanization, their mutabilitiy and arbitrariness notwithstanding.
But the range there is from "super bad" to "genocidal", so.
There's always going to be dehumanization in war, but how much depends on things like race, culture, and existing attitudes towards the enemy.
Not sure how this supports your thesis. Are you trying to say that the punic wars was more devastating/brutal than the Peloponnesian because the first had people of different races fighting while the second had only Greeks fighting amongst themselves ? there are several problems with this :
- We have no estimates of the casualties on both sides of both conflicts, Wikipedia only has an estimate of one side of the Peloponnesian, and it's only the military casualties.
- In the Peloponnesian war, Sparta actually allied with the Persians. They were entirely OK with people of different races murdering their fellow Greeks, I think they had zero problems murdering their own race too. (and burning the whole city if it came to that, but it didn't, but that doesn't really mean Spartans were softer because their enemies were Greek, it just means the Athenians surrendered quicker and didn't try again, unlike the Punics)
>Japanese in the Warring States vs. Japanese in China in the 1930s
This is really comparing apples and oranges, those two wars are about 5-6 centuries apart, whatever you're comparing as proxy for 'brutal' or 'destructive' is very much confounded by technological advances in warfare.
>Compare the attitudes of the English towards the Germans in WWI vs in WWII.
I don't understand what this is trying to say. Did English attitudes toward Germany differ between WW1 and WW2 (besides the trivial differences explainable by the change in geopolitical atmosphere and warfare style)? how much of that is both parties seeing each other as different or similar races?
>the behavior of the Germans on the different fronts
I never said that race-based dehumanization isn't brutally effective and leads to astonishing results when it could be used, in fact I placed it at the top of the hierarchy when it comes to dehumanization algorithms.
What I'm denying here is the claim that this efficiency of dehumanization can't be achieved using other methods or combination of methods, I'm asserting that it can, just with more effort/propaganda. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case in this specific Ukraine-Russia conflict, I don't trust the hose of (dis)information on this conflict the internet spews every day anyway, so I don't really have a strong opinion on anything in it besides the most naked facts.
All what I'm disputing is the claim
>Wars with same-race combatants are, always or most of the time or on average, less brutal than wars with different races fighting
I'm saying that this is false and reductive, Religion in particular is a very strong counterexample. Communism-style genocides is another.
I'm not going to reply line by line to your other points. Though I disagree with your interpretation of my argument it's clear we aren't going to reach agreement there, but this statement is just wrong. Genocide has occurred throughout history, including at times prior to and contemporary with the warring states period. Technology has nothing to do with it. For example the Dzungar's in China in the 1700s. More recently the Rwandan genocide was carried out with primitive weapons. There are numerous other examples.
Based on his speeches, both before invasion and the leaked one that was supposed to go out after a win, Putins objective is genocide. "The Ukrainian question", dude is literally quoting Hitler.
Yes, Russia was extremely brutal in Chechnya and in Syria. But consider how brutal the US was in Iraq, and consider how we would operate in a hypothetical war against Canada.
Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa... for one of the full horror stories.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528382
Is it possible this community you claim to speak for is not everything you think it is?
They are clearly pulling their punches, likely because of the ethnic/racial dynamics of this conflict.
For that matter, historically, Russia holding punches was not exactly the thing. Not even toward Russians.
The original propaganda line was that Ukrainians are basically Russians being taken home now. That nonsense was shattered by now. The idea that this will stop punches now that they are refusing, purely because both are white, is something only Americans can think.
-----------
War in Syria did not started by indiscriminate bombing of cities. It got there through series of escalations when rebels refused to give up.
> They expected to win quickly and easily - and are shocked it did not happened.
Very possible, but neither you nor me are in the position to know that.
> Holodomor, which is still debated whether it counts as genocide or not. For that matter, historically, Russia holding punches was not exactly the thing. Not even toward Russians.
The Holodomor was clearly a completely orthogonal issue to this as it wasn't a military conflict.
> Not even toward Russians.
What are you referencing in terms of conflict? Probably not chechens, because that would only go in favor of GPs point.
> War in Syria did not started by indiscriminate bombing of cities. It got there through series of escalations when rebels refused to give up.
Russia started intervening in 2015, 4 years into the civil war, and immediately began with indiscriminate bombardment of cities like Raqqa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_intervention_...)
> The idea that this will stop punches now that they are refusing, purely because both are white, is something only Americans can think.
The domestic opposition in Russia over killing far fewer people is already much larger than it was to the intervention over Syria which killed far more civilians early on.
It is not something "only Americans can think" that Russians care more about the lives of people of close ethnic relation to them as compared to Syrians.
I meant purgers, internal thing toward Russians.
Oh, and yes, 2011 to 2015 is long time of escalations.
The question is whether they will pull punches when ennemy don't give up.
Neither of those were covered on the TV. They are also from over half a century ago.
> 2011 to 2015 is long time of escalations.
But 2014 to 2022 isn't?
The idea that Russians care equally about the lives of Syrians and the lives of ethnic Russians & Ukrainians is fantasy. It's obviously false, even if Russians killed Russians in purges 60 years ago.
> 2014 to 2022
Sure, Ukraine actually got ready to defend. Russia actually got to the point of being ready to start war again.
But, actual full war started last week with hope of 96 hours till victory, installation of puppet goverment and weak divided west. They wanted them to be kind of like Belarus, useful for further own plans.
> The idea that Russians care equally about the lives of Syrians and the lives of ethnic Russians & Ukrainians is fantasy. It's obviously false, even if Russians killed Russians in purges 60 years ago.
They don't care about Ukrainians lives at all. If they keep not winning, they will move to deep active hate. Ukrainians are already nazi for them and that includes the Jewish president. And that sentiment is real inside Russians who do believe oficial version.
Purges were not 60 years ago. They were the thing Stalin shot himself into own leg right before WWII. But, fuckup at start is on brand here. Stalin has raising popularity as maligned father of Russia in Russia last 10-15 years.
This is such a demagogy and a narrow-sighted view of history. It is always brought up only for the purpose of pouring more oil on the flames and turning up nationalistic tensions.
Holodomor has nothing to do with Ukrainians or Russians. It had happened all over the Soviet Union.
Much more Kazakhs had died relatively to their total population, and almost the same amount of Russians in an absolute value.
Hungers of 1930s were a global event, not something conjured by one particularly nasty Georgian.
Wikipedia mentions that it is contested if it is intentional or not.
Personaly for me, intentionality doesn't seem far fetched, given gulags, forced relocations to siberia without supplies and liberal presentation of history/facts (ussr guides said that kaliningrad is russian from olden times).
Aside from Ukraine and Kazakhstan (both under the control of "one particularly nasty Georgian") which other regions of the globe suffered from mass (1+ million) deaths caused by famine in the 1930s?
The goals are different. It's not like they are trying to make Syria part of the new Russian Empire.
There's plenty of videos of Russian troops not attacking civilians and surrendering. But there's also videos of them attacking civilian targets...
It seems there's some Slavic fellowship at play but that it's mostly among regular soldiers, not the leadership. Then again, maybe the gross incompetence shown by the Russians is a result of said fellowship + plausible deniability...
Either way, the war's gone shockingly bad for the Russians. Whether or not Ukraine's reports are entirely correct, everyone can agree it's embarrassing to the Russians.
In terms of numbers according to the Wikipedia article they have about 650 air planes and ~300 helicopter's.
Thats a solid fighting force for a relatively small country.
Russia as lots of tools - missiles and such that are good at destroying buildings.
The problems in that Putin understands that the cities in Ukraine have value. He is trying to take them over with minimal destruction to the buildings at least right now. That way he could move his people with with out needed to rebuild.
It sure seems like Putin expected them to capitulate quickly and become largely docile before the occupying Russian soldiers while a new government is installed. Not much else explains their approach thus far other than that (their supply provisioning was clearly built for a very short conflict).
If Russia doesn't go for the full brutal police state approach, they'll hemorrhage with any typical occupation and will have to leave, and any new system they attempt to install and leave behind will be toppled rapidly (the Russians will have to keep sending forces in).
> If Russia doesn't go for the full brutal police state approach
Ukrainians are used to living in a democracy though, so it may not be easy/possible.
> bring in a lot Russian citizens to live in those cities and begin a full, forced transformation, while you violently try to strip away Ukrainian culture
That's what they did back in the 1930s in East Ukraine. They had to starve out/relocate the locals to make room for the "colonists". But doing this in the 21st century? I shudder to think how this would go down. And if they don't do this, anyone who comes over to settle will be met with extreme hostility.
I believe Putin lives in the past when it comes to understanding Ukraine and Ukrainians. It looks like he might actually believe (have believed?) his own propaganda.
I do not think the question is wether or not Ukraine will fall to the Russian state. But if the Russian economy and current government will stay viable through the duration of the war.
Global sanctions applied correctly could cause a refugee crises in Russia population ~144 million. In short, Russian people need their basic needs met. Just like any human. They will go where that can happen more easily if their own country can not provide. 57,792 kilometres of Russian boarder length is ripe for exit.
“border”, and the vast majority of that is coastline, and the vast majority of the coastline is Arctic coastline, which is very much not ripe for exit.
the question is how many of them are operational.
Are Ukranians really still flying? If that was the case, the mentioned 40-mile convoy heading to Kiev would have been hit by now, no? Russians driving vehicles bumper to bumper shows VERY strong confidence that they own the sky, so things might not be as rosy for Ukraine as they seem.
Not necessarily. That's likely to be a target-rich, but well-defended area. As long as it's not moving - especially given rumors of fuel troubles - there may be better things for the Ukranian air force to tackle, like helicopters moving troops around.
Again, there are probably far more urgent targets for the Ukrainian Air Force than a convoy that hasn't moved in days.
I wouldn't be surprised if the convoy had the equivalent of a 1000 US Stinger AA missiles or more. It's not with strafing if there's too high a chance the jet would get shot down.
As a layman, I'm guessing the only things worth the risk might be some operation that could potentially trap the convoy (e.g. between two knocked-out bridges).
It's a sign of weakness, not strength.
Killing aggressors is often used as an excuse for the aggressors to be more aggressive and Russia's army is large enough to replace that convoy a few times over without much of a sweat. Violence also helps back the idea that Russia needs to be there to stop the violent nazis that state media has painted Ukrainians to be (goes without saying, this is completely fabricated).
It's also a morale killer; a lot of Russians have Ukrainian relatives. A lot of the captured combatants are very young and seem confused about why they're there (yes, could just be propaganda).
Ukraine just wants them to go home. The Ukrainian people don't really have a conflict with the Russian people.
It definitely isn't "completely fabricated":
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion
The real problem is, who gives a shit if a small unit in the Ukrainian National Guard is made up of far right extremists? It's a purely internal matter for the Ukrainians to deal with however they see fit, and provides zero justification for Russia's invasion.
But by lying and claiming it's a lie you're going to make anyone who looks into the truth behind the matter more likely to become sympathetic to the Russian version of events.
It would be exactly the same as calling all Americans Nazi's during the reign of Trump. There is no foundation in fact all American's are but there are small groups he as the President supported who were Nazi's. This is a plain lie to serve their propaganda.
Were any far-right groups formally integrated into the US military, federal law enforcement, or anything else like that during Trump's presidency? That's the difference here, the Azov battalion was a private militia that was made an actual part of the Ukrainian military.
Sincerely from the bottom of my heart I suggest every American to de-escalate because most certainly its not fun to live in a society when things have to be solved by violence between countrymen and Putin has done cleanical job.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putin_khuylo!
Oh and also if the US government started banning other languages then english.
None of this justifies Russian imperialism, but I think we get too caught up in war and can often brush the crimes of the side we agree with under the rug.
https://twitter.com/ng_ukraine/status/1497924614865002497
That does not justify any invasion, but there's also no need to go on the other extreme and turn into azov apologia.
Also, consider: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pentagon-stops-short-bannin...
And: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capitol-riot-january-6-military...
As a westerner, I've definitely noticed my more left leaning friends agree with actions that seemingly contradict classical liberal ideals (free speech, free association) as long as such actions seem to be in service of fighting fascism and misinformation. Perhaps some propaganda strategists assumed that 'fighting nazis' was an acceptable parallel to how the United States claims it is defending freedom/democracy whenever it intervenes in some other country. It obviously didn't work.
It isn't talking about the Azov battalion or anything; that's an uncalled-for steelmanning because everyone is free associating things they read about in the news.
My granma told me what was happening in Khmelnik (West Ukraine) at times of German occupation.
50% of the city was Jewish. And almost zero left in first few months. And that was done primarily by locals from UPA - not Germans. You can hide from a German but cannot hide from your neighbor.
UPA and Stepan Bandera[1] is a hero of Ukraine now - it is a street in Kiev named after him. Despite the fact that Poland and Russia condemn him as a war criminal - for massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians.
And now Ukrainian refugees are coming to Poland... That will not be that easy ... Liberal values are quite thin as practice shows.
I am quite surprised that nice Jew guy mr. Zelensky didn't do anything about it. Probably because he is not who rule there.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera
> As a westerner, I've definitely noticed my more left leaning friends agree with actions that seemingly contradict classical liberal ideals (free speech, free association) as long as such actions seem to be in service of fighting fascism...
Nah, this is targeted at Russians. I think that as a westerner you underestimate the power of the myth of Russians saving the world from fascism. This is the very core of their identity. You can find some interesting details here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1497306746330697738.html
Personal experience: I grew up during cold war in one of east-european satelites of the Soviet union. That myth was probably weaker here than in the Soviet union itself, yet it felt ever-present; kind of representation of the mythical struggle of good versus evil. When me and my friends were playing "soldiers" as kids, we were always Russians shooting at fascists. And I remember loving books for kids where some Russian paratrooper befriends local boy and together fight fascism... This was during the latest stages of the communist regime, when almost everyone here hated communists and especially Russians. The idealized memory of their heroic struggle against fascism was the only positive thing that survived in the minds of people.
Obviously, no mention of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact etc. in history books.
Twice is coincidence...
https://twitter.com/Kyruer/status/1370361298135965702
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group
Of course, being able to capture land doesn't mean they can occupy it.
They've screwed so much of this operation thus far, but I bet you that good chunks of that column consist of Tunguskas and Tors, and the Ukrainians know it.
Maybe not, but there are definitely those in service, one damaged and abandoned, one disabled and one captured.
That Russia sent in such a rich sitting duck target and it's not being attacked suggests they have air superiority and we're getting bad information.
Obviously the first thing that pops to mind when you hear “air superiority” and “40 mile convoy of enemy tanks” is “bomb that convoy to dust”. The second thing that should pop is “ambush”. Losing 5 aircraft to surface to air missiles to take out 5 tanks would be a poor tradeoff.
Doubtless bombing the convoy is something Ukraine has considered. Also doubtless they are aware that the convoy isn’t guaranteed to be a parade of sitting ducks.
Maybe they didn't bomb the convoy, but just the supply, like they did before.
Once those soldiers go searching for food, the Ukrainians can take some extra tanks for their army ;).
President Putin has authorized the use of overwhelming force to evict the occupiers and avenge our fallen servicemen. President-in-Exile <insert expendable criminal> leads the official people's government from Belarus and blah...blah..."
There is nothing at all that has stopped the military from attacking such an obvious target, but it would hurt Ukraine's plea as a victim seeking peace from the RUS citizens and provide truthiness to Putin's internal propaganda.
Better to let this encirclement occur, the thaw hits, RUS armor stuck with harrassed supply lines and the hell of urban combat against a determined populace. Meanwhile, your western flank is feeding advanced weaponry into the remaining UKR units and your economy has imploded.
Take all the corruption, assumptions RUS had, etc. and it all still looks like a scenario from some HS history class to help teach about Caesar or Stalingrad.
Wouldn't you want to disclose the hell out of your extremely effective anti-aircraft weapons so you don't have to use them as much? Obviously not the positioning or numbers but just that you have them...
Nor if you’re worried about a wider conflict - perhaps also involving Asia – & want both maximal degradation of Russian capabilities, & “mystery” advantages for as long as possible.
Surprise is a force multiplier, but a new capability is only a surprise for a short period.
And a simplistic model assuming the Ukrainian allies are optimally pursuing “prevention” as their goal insufficient to explain all mysteries.
If the EU had been clearer about how intense sanctions would be, & how firm they considered the ‘red line’ limiting conflict to the regions Russian-allied forces already claimed, maybe the whole invasion could have been deterred!
They weren’t so clear & firm, either because they were hiding the strength of their resolve, or the resolve only materialized late. The latter is currently the official story, but such things often only become known, if ever, years or decades later. People still debate whether Spain sunk the Maine in 1898, or FDR ignored or minimized advance warnings of Pearl Harbor to shepherd the US into WW2 in 1941.
There’s also a gigantic phase change in strategy between when you believe an aggression is deterrable, & when you think it inevitable. If deterrence is an option, sure, show strength – but be aware the potential aggressor may detect any bluffs, or discount real strength as a bluff. But as soon as you decide war is inevitable, you may instead want to hide strengths, for a more decisive military response later.
If the US/NATO concluded an invasion was inevitable 1 month, 6 months, or even years ago, there was plenty of time to secretly deploy “just in case” novel weapons & tactics - even while Ukraine’s leadership, especially, was publicly signaling “no war expected” & avoiding any overt mobilization.
Also, the risk of deploying secret weapons into a state with significant corruption would have been much too high.
The US was shouting from the rooftops that they expected an attack, in a manner putting real credibility at risk. While laypeople, & left footsoldiers, may have completely discounted the possibility, Germany & others in NATO are close enough allies they'd have seen more of the tangible reasons why the US was saying that.
Note that feigned surprise can also be a conscious tactic, to help shepherd-along any alliance stragglers, or domestic opinion. Or, excuse inaction. "No one could have known", say the official mouthpieces for those who ignored the alarms from those who did know. "We are blameless!"
Further, if there was actual confidence in policymakers that an attack was unlikely, & that Putin was deterrable, then pre-announcing the severity of the response would have been very cheap! You won't have to do it, in the expected case. And pre-announcing makes the expected case even more likely.
The risk of coordinating with a leaky/corrupt regime isn't necessarily disqualifyng. There may be portions of the Ukraine government/military in which there was very high trust - such as close contacts in special forces, & those who have repeatedly proven themselves in the last ~8y of lower-grade hostilities. Or, people whose comms have been completely pierced – so NATO knows exactly how much corruption, or mixed-loyalties, they'll express.
Weaponry could also have been pre-positioned just outside Ukraine, or kept in the custody/knowledge of trusted contractors or deniably pre-positioned special forces. I hope you don't think Russians, like the saboteur groups repeatedly confronted in Ukrainian cities, are the only forces who can pretend to be someone else when it suits them!
As another example, no one outside of the home airbase support teams know who's really flying a fighter jet, unless enemies shoot it down & recover the pilot. I hope Ukraine has some world-class fighter pilots! But with lives and practically priceless (in the short term) military hardware at stake, if an even 10% better pilot is ready & willing from an allied counry, I suspect Ukraine can grant them a uniform & citizenship instantly. (It's been surprising how many NATO countries have said it's OK for their private citizens to go fight in Ukraine.)
It's much more likely that many politicians were genuinely surprised by the invasion. They ignored the Eastern Europeans, as always, who were just being paranoid about Russia, as always. People tend to ignore problems that are hard to deal with, especially when solving them seems costly, until they can ignore them no longer.
That stronger pre-invasion deterrence wasn't popular in "domestic public opinion" is all that it takes, for the private discussions between the national-security establishments & top rulers to go roughly:
PRE-WAR SANCTION HAWKS (eg: US): "They're gonna invade all Ukraine, here's how we know, precommitting to all the tough measures you'd surely do if that happens might deter it."
PRE-WAR SANCTION DOVES (eg: DE): "Well, really-specific toughness up front isn't popular with our voters, & we're still hoping for that tiny chance Putin's just saber-rattling, despite your evidence. So, if what you say materializes, we'd be able to be tougher than Putin expects. But we can't signal that beforehand, no matter the benefits."
Voila. They've hidden their true level of commitment to retaliate economically, under the eventuality we find ourselves in – no fancy multilateral secret plans required.
The flip in Germany, especially, was dizzying, wasn't it? Do you think the whole package was improvised in the preceding few days? Or that it was assembled from preexisting "break in case of fire" emergency plans, at the very top, that lower-ranking party-members & coalition partners simply didn't need-to-know? I'm saying the latter.
One example of something that wasn't prepackaged or prepared in any way: There are reports that only Lindner and Scholz knew about the 100bn EUR fund beforehand, the rest were surprised.
If so, their plan just completely blew up now with their destroyed economy and wasting a lot more of their planned resources to capture only the first step… And Putin don't want to admit/face defeat so is trying to win the Ukraine even with the fact that he already lost.
It all is so insane, it is freaking hard to understand these maniacs…
Slava Ukraini!
To strengthen this assumption here's a canned article which was likely meant to be published had things gone according to plan, but pulled, since they hadn't.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...
RIA is a state owned news agency.
Why precisely they thought they'd meet no serious opposition in their attempted airdrop near Kyiv is anyone's guess. Mine is that Putin started believing his own tales about Nazis taking Ukraine hostage, assuming the populace is dying to be liberated from them.
Things crumbled once this met a different reality on the ground, and now they're trying to raise the stakes, and have become desperate enough to begin indiscriminately shelling population centres, Kharkiv most notably.
There's a ton of reporting right now easy to miss important while trying to drink from the firehose.
I first saw it when a friend sent me a link to this twitter thread: https://twitter.com/Tom_deWaal/status/1498310064117059585
Funny how westerners are surprised by this. Not telling the grunts what they are going into has been Russian modus operandi since forever... Just like throwing bodies at the problem, sending conscripts from Central Asia first (throwing actual Russians into the meat grinder might prove unpopular), rampant looting (including of the most absurd stuff like toilets in Georgia 2008), etc, etc.
Somehow most of the pundits and analysts have been blindsided by this stuff, even though it's common knowledge in Eastern Europe.
Isn't that what everybody thought?
Didn't NATO also think that? Isn't that why the US and friends categorically refused boots on the ground, no-fly-zones or even just strategic ambiguity?
Or maybe, things are just slow, because they are slow..
Putin didn't realize that his military was hollowed-out when he made the call to invade, and thus everyone scrambled to fill in the gaps of their units with conscripts. That's why we're seeing an unusually high number of captured Russian forces who appear to have nearly no military training or experience. We've seen bizarre tactics that make no sense - tanks being abandoned, APCs driving with no support, etc.
It stands to reason that if we're asking "Where's the Russian Air Force?", the answer is that it may never have existed in the size we thought. IMO this is a more logical answer than trying to figure out some 3D chess strategy of why Russia wouldn't their planes during the largest invasion since WWII.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2016/2/23/11092614/putin-army-threat
For ground troops, you may very well be right - they have been heavily relying on private military corps for a while now.
When I watched HBO's excellent Chernobyl that was one of the recurring themes. Everybody is lying to their superiors and nobody wants to hear bad news and they suffer because if it. I assumed that was probably exaggerated for the sake of drama but maybe it was actually understated?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucEs0nBuowE
Communist countries were full of blatant incompetence, lying about what actually happens, mismanagement, stealing and strategic deliberate incompetence.
Just look at state of economy of communist block and why USSR failed.
Of course the resulting system is pretty brittle to shocks.
By contrast, a functioning dictatorship means a single madman can pretty much decide to destroy humanity at any point.
"Why Russia will lose this war?
Much of the "realist" discourse is about accepting Putin's victory, cuz it's guaranteed. But how do we know it is?
I'll argue that analysts 1) overrate Russian army 2) underrate Ukrainian one 3) misunderstand Russian strategy & political goals" Kamil Galeev
It's not that hard to figure out. Putin is saving his planes for something big. Direct conflict with NATO being the most likely (and of course scariest) answer.
This does not necessarily mean that he wants or intends to fight NATO, just that he sees it as a strong enough possibility that he's willing to incur heavy losses in the short term in order to conserve his strength.
[1] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/28/the-kremlins-pro...
Keep in mind that media reports and reports from the Ukrainian military are designed to minimize losses and boost morale.
I've seen quite a few videos of Ukrainian planes destroyed on the tarmac and there isn't evidence for a significant Ukrainian air presence anymore.
We don't need to bust moral after 8 years of war. It's not possible to bust something 8 years straight. My FB is full of «killed by Russian», «lost in fight», etc.
You spoke at behalf of Ukrainians, but you have zero information from Ukraine. If you have facts, then list them, please.
@oryxspioenkop has the most reliable confirmed info on losses, as long as you can stand his love for Bayraktars.
The US should put up a billion dollars for the program to get it started. Land the jets in NATO territory.
Let's put troop loyalty to the test and see if we can't drain some of their best hardware.
We're not allowed to attack Russia directly so let's plunder them. Our leaders are not being nearly creative enough in this situation.
The deal fell apart, however.
https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/is-poland-sending-fighter-...
If a Polish pilot flies it to Ukraine, Russia will consider that an act of war, and possibly start bombarding Poland. If Ukrainian pilot comes to Poland and takes off from a Polish airport then again: that is an act of war.
The only possibility to deliver them without joining the war against Russia seems to be to disassemble those MIGs and send them by train/truck.
https://news.yahoo.com/no-eu-countries-aren-t-233404478.html
Also, that one jet that flew from Romania was flying BACK, because it already belonged to Ukraine, just had an emergency landing in Romania for some unknown reason: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44514/su-27-returning-...
EDIT: the fact that the jet was Ukrainian gives Romania plausible deniability - they can always say that the pilot wanted to fight, and took the jet against their will :)
Just have to tow them with horses and tractors. ;)
https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/103726
Skeptical that would be effective for two reasons:
1. Pilots that have family back home probably won't be eager to take the offer
2. Russia has shown no qualms about targeted assassinations in foreign lands.
> 1. Pilots that have family back home probably won't be eager to take the offer
Russia has not been known to do North-Korea-style family executions (so far)
> 2. Russia has shown no qualms about targeted assassinations in foreign lands.
Russia might be too weak after all this is over to still have these capabilities.
Time will tell!
This is not an accurate representation, see:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/31t5on/did_t...
The fact that he's that scared of COVID shatters the tough guy persona. The fact that he was seemingly ok with these pictures going public shows that he has no sense of how silly and bad this looks.
[1] https://nz.news.yahoo.com/photos-putin-keeps-his-distance-du...
Ukraine is a different beast. Its a country with a regular army that has spent the last 8 years undergoing a rapid modernization process for said army. They have 44 million people, and lots of western support.
However, the US military has the finest logistic operations in the world.
Also, there is no substitute for fighting an actual enemy. Part of the reason the US (especial Air Force and Naval Aviation) is so good is that they have actually been fighting. From Libya(Reagan), Gulf War I, Serbia, Gulf War II, Afghanistan, Libya (Obama), the US has been fighting quite a bit.
Whenever you are actually fighting an enemy, there is a learning curve. The big question is whether the sanctions and international isolation combined with the Ukrainian resistance will force Russia to back down, before they navigate that.
I say this as a medium-big supporter of the US military.
But one important element of dollar stability is that carrier group shows up on the doorstep of those getting out of line and shows them errors of their ways. Thus there is a constant need for some pretext to deploy military somewhere.
Securing oil fields and the Persian Gulf is more than money and oil, it’s about securing trade via maritime traffic in the gulf for liberal capitalist democracies worldwide.
And keeping oil access secure is about pure security but also keeping prices low to not disrupt economies.
At least that’s how I understand it.
Projects the power that the military will show up.
Yeah, we would all like the narrative to be Russian army not working.
But it's also possible that they are just working slowly. And certainly possible that Putin would rather loose conscripts than risk airplanes.
(Honestly, I just hope the madness stops before more people are hurt -- ideally with the Russians going home)
>Airstrikes would not go entirely uncontested. Russia’s air force lacks experience in suppressing or destroying enemy air defenses, and it rarely uses missiles that are designed to destroy radar. As a result, Ukraine’s meager air defenses could still pose a challenge. But Ukrainian air defenses are in short supply, and they would be unlikely to provide effective cover for most of the country’s ground troops. They would be quickly overwhelmed.
>The opening air campaign would probably be short. Unlike Western militaries, which concentrate firepower in their air forces, Russia puts the bulk of its firepower in its ground forces, so it would quickly proceed to a ground campaign.
Navy doing navy things? aka floating there threatening civilians.
Army is in terrible disarray losing tons of equipment to mud. Losing even more equipment to combat. Their MREs expired 7 years ago. Their army sure is looking pathetic.
Is this Putin's last hurrah?
I think his life expectancy has gone down as of about a week ago.
On paper they are still billionaires because the stock exchange was shutdown. I really don't know how much power they have exactly. I doubt they have any sort of assassination capability. Nor do I expect them to exercise this.
Ultimately this is about defunding their war. Their ability to sustain this war has a very short lifetime now. They are now excluded from the global community. The Russian people are headed into poverty.
We get to just sit back and let that happen.
So they expected a lot of infrastructure will be available for them to take over. As we know, this didn't happen and now they have to destroy it. Honestly this is not good for Ukrainians as they will now suffer for real.
I found this site provides somewhat better analysis of situation, as well as The Hill and Breaking Points for example.
http://www.iswresearch.org/
No one wants to lose their life going against someone so ruthless knowing they could lose their life... or their loved ones.
So, taking down putin from within is a plausible event.
Small numbers of light vehicles entering towns they have not overcome...are then promptly destroyed by irregular Ukrainian forces often with improvised weapons.
Seemingly trying to take large cities without first gaining and controlling ground and surrounding areas.
Lack of attempts to destroy strategic infrastructure at the beginning - e.g. TV/broadcast, communications, bridges, rail, etc - using cruise missiles or whatever.
Unclear objectives - are they really trying to actually take Kiev or just force Ukraine into submission?
Effective use of an air-force is pointless without dealing with the above issues and more.
>Small numbers of light vehicles entering towns they have not overcome...trying to take large cities without first gaining and controlling ground and surrounding areas.
This was our strategy in Iraq -- highly mobile warfare. Marines sprinting ahead in humvees without armor. it created massive confusion and misunderstanding on where our thrust was - i think it tied up enemy resources outside of Baghdad or something. But in the long run, not capturing enemies or pacifying the areas in-between caused a lot of heartburn later; let alone the looting and lawlessness from leaving power vacuums everywhere. (humanitarian fail)
Some massive differences were air superiority, night vision, and disruption of enemy coordination. They could call-in airstrikes anytime there was a threat of armor or mortar fire. Generation Kill is a really good series showing this (it seemed like madness until i watched "The Pacific").
These young enlisted conscripts are nothing but cannon fodder with their superiors hoping they can get off a shot or two before they're killed.
Pilots, being officers, are another matter entirely. I remember this Kamov Ka-40 helicopter had the ability to blow off its blades to enable the pilot to bail out with an ejection seat. There's nothing remotely like it in the U.S. arsenal.
If that's the case, industry mostly in the east would serve much better untouched, same for rest of infrastructure. Why destroy & rebuild when you get it for free and can start draining the country immediately. Bear in mind Russia has huge demographic problems just around the corner, and smart people were running away in droves long before this.
All this - truly, hardcore naive. In whole eastern Europe currently busy with refugees efforts, and whole nations would rather risk death than be once again enslaved by them, the memories are still rather fresh.
That Russia's foreign actions are (rightfully in this and many other cases) hated as much as Hitler wasn't something leadership could grok in any way. They keep peddling these bigger Russia tales while calling in 10,000 muslim killers from Chechnya on what they claim brotherly slavic nation. You can't fail more morally in the eyes of other slavs.
I can't be objective in this topic due to coming from this oppressed region, and tyrant evil persona like Putin doesn't deserve it. Yes there are many, less powerful people like him. I would love to see them be disposed of, stripped away from wealth and power for good. Till now it was a pipe dream, same as watching some narco-baron enjoying his wealth while slowly killing everybody. Now there is at least hope that things may change, and maybe even permanently, at least a bit. And hope is a powerful thing.
Also, assuming any of the responsible thought about this beforehand at all (which IS an assumption), they probably expected further economic sanctions of SOME sort from invading. Rebuilding costs money. Rebuilding things like high-tech fighter aircraft costs truly ridiculous amounts of money. There were plenty of reasons they would have hoped to be able to do this all on a modest budget.
Indeed NATO certainly expected Ukrainians to just surrender.
Which is probably why they didn't get a no-fly-zone, strategic ambiguity, or other things like that from the US and friends.
The west isnt going to sacrifice itself to save kyiv.
It's not clear we would have risked nuclear war by selling discounted cruise missiles to Ukraine.
But the Ukrainians might have used them prematurely, or surrendered without a fighting chance.
Or the US could have just deployed 50k troops to Poland and said "we might interfer in Ukraine". Then Putin might never have invaded.
Instead the US said, they would not interfere.
NATO expected (and AFAICT, still expects) Ukraine to be defeated if Putin attacked and wasn't dissuaded by the resulting sanctions from pressing the attack. I don't think they were expected to just surrender.
Chechens themselves had the same tragedy in Grozny. I don't believe these puppet soldiers have the sympathy of the vast majority of muslim people.
While there are many problems like treatment of african students, comments on TV channels mentioning "civilized" part of the world, and not having the public outcry for middle-eastern people(or welcoming arms for refugees), and the topic you mentioned. Anyone I talked to in Turkey supports the struggle of Ukrainian people.
Another interesting point is that Russia seems to be recruiting a lot from the Turkic people inside Russia. So Turkish drones are also hitting them. But that doesn't seem to change public opinion.
Overall, unfortunately, the Turkish people became geopolitical experts because of all the mess and tragedy around Turkey (Note to reader: Check the map if you don't know Turkey's neighbors). One visible metric is twitter conflict/OSINT account number in Turkish. Most people have a balanced view, but stopping aggression and civilian casualties comes first.
Another interesting point is that there are sanctions on some Turkish industries, based on secondary concerns and some lobbying. But, Turkey singlehandedly supported Europe's energy security/ general security(Azerbaijan, Libya, Syrian refugees), balanced Russia(Syria, Libya), supported Ukraine's defense industry long before anyone else.
I hope it stops as soon as possible.
So, bearing mind that I'm just shitposting on the Internet and have no military expertise, I do think that they had a strategy; based on the automated release of articles 4 days after the start of the invasion which declared that Putin had provided the "final solution to the Ukrainian problem", they really expected it to be over in four days.
Bear in mind that:
1. Ukraine has different groups with different mother tongues, like Switzerland or Belgium. The east has a lot of people who grow up speaking Russian as their home language. 2. They landed paratroops at key airports across Ukraine on day 1. 3. Ukraine government has claimed they've found significant numbers of special forces disguised as Ukrainians on the first few fays. 4. The large body of conventional forces invading on day one.
I would guess - completely "guy on the Internet" mind you - that what the strategy was is that the paratroops would get a beachhead and destroy the air force, that they and the special forces would hunt down and murder or capture all the key Ukrainian millitary and government officials in the first few days.
Meanwhile the conventional forces in the east would be "greeted as liberators", to borrow an American phrase, by Russian-speaking Ukrainians, who would provide food and fuel. Reinforcements would be flown into captured airfields. Chechen terror units would be used against serious resisters.
By the fourth day, Ukrainian resistance would be a disorganised shambles of cut-off government units, show trials of any captured members of the Ukrainian government could start so they could tell a little story about how the Jewish Ukrainian president was actually a baby-eating Nazi, and Putin could laugh off any attempts to complain as meaningless.
The paratroops were captured or killed, the Ukrainian air force kept flying or escaped to friendly countries (and are now returning), the alleged special forces got nowhere near the Ukrainian government, and Russian-speaking Ukrainians have been telling Russian troops to go away. The Chechen terror units appear to have been killed en masse.
I think they started to believe their own lies. Like a feedback loop from Putin to below, and then the same things going up again. Putin gets advised in a world created by his own lies.
They list three possible explanations:
* Too few precision-guided munitions (PGMs)
* Risk of friendly fire from surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) due to poor coordination
* Lack of experienced Russian pilots
This one is so hard for me to imagine, given Russia's long history of aerospace pride and massive military budget. The article attributes it to limited flying time compared to US/UK pilots and unfamiliarity with their latest and most advanced jets. Truly hard to comprehend how a military like Russia's could be suffering from lack of training despite a multi-year lead-up to a massive invasion.
This is exactly the metric. Unlike their other assets, planes are expensive to replace and pilots take a long time to train.
Russia needs to maintain their air assets in order to defend themselves in case they get challenged that way. And they have tons of warm bodies and old hardware to throw at the situation.
Another perspective is that Russian air assets are very vulnerable to MANPADS style air-defense systems. Ukraine has received a ton of these systems from the west and are able to engage targets up to about 3 miles out. They're also vulnerable to the S300 systems the Ukrainians inherited, although its not clear how many of those remain.
France and Germany aren't far behind - 52.8 billion and 52.7 billion respectively. I believe Germany recently pledged to raise it's military spending to 100 billion (a lot of flashy headlines but couldn't find details), so soon it will far outspend Russia.
Germany will have greater personnel cost, yes. In other areas, Russia will have a greater cost burden. For example, they don’t share defense resources with other nations (I.e. no. NATO equivalent).
The person you’re replying to is simply stating that Germany’s higher personnel cost does not nullify the effectiveness of relative strength of the German military versus the Russians.
Not to 100 billion, by 100 billion. Euros that is.
https://www-tagesschau-de.translate.goog/inland/innenpolitik...
Not when you pay for corruption :)
Can you imagine US or western Europe soldiers doing something similar en masse?
And its not just that - heavy drinking, fuck-it attitude, and suddenly called to invade the nation who was supposed to be their closest brothers?
They are sort of potemkin village kind of army. Few exceptional units (Spetsnaz), few cool technologies ie anti aircraft missiles, literally maybe 10 new Armata tanks (they found out they can't manufacture them en masse). So you see 40-50 years old tanks which Javelin can fry easily, and even clueless civilian can fire them after 30 minutes of training. You see soldiers abandoning vehicles since they have higher survability on foot. You see tank crew coming to Ukrainian police station to ask where is gas station (I call it clever way to surrender).
I think its actually very dangerous for Russia as a state right now. Showing this much weakness might motivate some neighbors. Especially China, they could run through the country all the way to Barents sea without breaking a sweat.
Well, it's not as if the US military industrial complex has nothing of that?
I think the problem isn't corruption alone, but the combination of corruption and all the corrupt trying hard to put their own eggs elsewhere than Russia's basket. Working with a corrupt authoritarian leader can be profitable, but you really want to have a plan B for when SHtF.
US corrupt elites have the luxury problem that if their wealth and power isn't secure in the US, it probably isn't very secure anywhere else either. So they have to take just a little care not shit where they eat (too much), and maybe sponsor a few museums and stuff, robber baron style.
A good (extremely depressing) film to watch is "Leviathan" (2014).
I agree there's probably less of the "money just unaccounted for" type of corruption in the US (though it does happen, especially in connection with wars and intelligence agencies), and certainly less petty bribes. But that may just be a symptom of more organized corruption, so that it isn't necessary to let to many lower instances have a cut. In short, there may be more legal ways to divert public trust to private gain, so that the petty sort is just pointlessly risky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayq2WTOIOAQ&t=2964s
Except Hong Kong (and the "expansion" of the South China Sea).
To which I say: Russia has ~half of the world's nuclear arsenal. (The US has ~half, the rest of the nuclear states are mere footnotes by # of nukes, relying on the fact that no one really needs more than about a dozen).
If this is the state of their conventional military, it raises questions about the state of their nuclear deterrent.
In any case, if China wanted Siberian resources, fomenting a breakaway region would be cleaner than invading.
A scary fucking thought. i.e. some of them will stay in silos, but others will be partially airworthy.
>In any case, if China wanted Siberian resources, fomenting a breakaway region would be cleaner than invading.
This would result in a nuclear exchange.
Possibly. But the exchange would occur on Russian soil. China is more than capable of covertly supporting separatists. Hell, it might not even have to. Just prime the pump and then let the West take over.
The thing is though, is there any reason to believe the PLA would be in a much different shape? The last wars the Chinese fought in were decades ago, and the performance was pretty poor. So we don't have any real world idea of how that army would perform - it could suffer from poor morale, stupid tactics, lack of coordination, no logistics, or it could be superbly trained with great equipment.
Outside of cities, where alternatives to air strikes are viable, you can still see a lot of russian helicopter and artillery action.
Those need targeting. And the article mentions a lack of targeting pods. (UkrAF is largely functional because the initial volley missed many air fields, planes and radar systems.)
This increasingly looks like the Russian military procured shiny, expensive kit from cronies and then neglected to equip them.