Good to see a take that isn't binary. Hopefully this is the end of Putin's government and the ease of collapse helps us realize our conjured threats for "defense" funding are only making the world less safe.
Unlikely. The Russian’s have struggled logistically almost from the start. Within a day-or-two of the invasion there were numerous reports of Russian tank units walking around on foot looking for diesel. This is consistent with the convoy looking like it’s struggling with mechanical and fuel problems. Those soldiers can’t have much food left.
The Russian’s also wouldn’t park themselves like that. They don’t have air dominance and from the numerous Ukrainian air strikes, it doesn’t seem like they have much idea of what’s above them at any given time. (They’re parked close together to stay under the umbrella of anti-aircraft weaponry.) The longer the convoy waits, the more time the Ukrainians have to prep to shell the convoy or hit it from the air.
Most of these things fall within Russia's known doctrine. The daily advancement rate of the convoy is right at their by-the-book limit - it just takes time to advance an operation on the ground, and this is why airfields were targeted early on in a bid to accelerate deployment; media reports of a "slow" advance are just unrealistic analysis.
This goes for other questions about the campaign. As a large conscript force still basically using the Soviet model, weak troops are often thrown into the fire early on to soften opposition. Likewise, reliance on artillery is a byproduct of the air force being stretched thin and not reinvesting in new equipment: air dominance and precision bombing missions are expensive, and Russia's military primarily focuses on maintaining its own sovereignty, thus most of the allocation is towards a defensive air war with support provided by ground-based rockets and shelling.
However, there are severe challenges still to be reckoned with, which support the idea of Russia remaining on the back foot. The reports of abandoned vehicles, disorganized troops and stretched supplies hold some credence; again, as a conscript army it's harder to pursue delegation of responsibility like a professional force. You are getting relatively less out of more troops simply due to lack of coordination. As well, Ukraine has a smaller force but has been spurred to rearm with the assistance of foreign aid and equipment since the 2014 invasion, getting access to some of the best technologies and training of NATO forces. So Ukraine has some significant battlefield advantages, and with the cutoffs to supply chains on Russia's end, from my viewpoint, while a Russian victory could still occur if they rout the forces in major cities, a slow, protracted conflict will definitely end in Russian defeat at significant cost to civilians. The next weeks will be critical.
I do. War on the Rocks had an article about Russian Logistics[1] which mentions that:
"The Russian army does not have enough trucks to meet its logistic requirement more than 90 miles beyond supply dumps. To reach a 180-mile range, the Russian army would have to double truck allocation to 400 trucks for each of the material-technical support brigades."
Task and Purpose has been doing some videos on the war in Ukraine, and they use that article to evaluate Russia's progress against those supply limitations[2], and basically it all lines up that Russian progress has been constrained by supply, and that the current pause is likely because of the next actions they will take[3].
They tried to take Hostomel and airports SE and SW of Kyiva and failed. They were going for fast strikes.
The failed to get the other airports (tried to land a cargo plane and it was destroyed) - thought they go to Hostomel it was only by landing literally 100 assault helicopters with 1000 soldiers.
That is literally 1/2 of their entire rotary fleet for a single, risky operation.
Since then, they've been mauled over and over around the airport and have actually made negative or neutral progress for 5 days.
So it remains to be seen if the balance of force can move in one direction or the other, I really wish the West would do more to make it more decisive.
In the meantime, the USA can pay $100-200K (i.e. per javelin/stinger/mlaw etc.) to have a large chunk of Russian Amour sent to the dustbin with not much risk, that's not such a bad deal at all.
It's costs nearly a million dollars to train, prepare and support a lowly US soldier. Then multiply that by the fact every fighter has 5 admins somewhere in the chain backing him up i.e. commanders, support, communications, intelligence etc..
Especially given that it is basically 'riskless' i.e. no US soldiers will die.
$4B to wipe out the Russian Army? Deal of the Century.
The Russians can't make more gear in a short period of time, and it comes at great cost. Remember one armoured unit has support, training, soldiers as well.
In the 'long game' of attrition warfare, the West would actually win, that is actually the State Dept. Assessment - that Russia 'wins' in Ukraine but is ground down over 15-20 years and eventually loses.
Meanwhile, the US and West have more advanced, much more wealthy economies, and can send relatively cheap weapons to help grind Russia down.
Frankly, if we could have a 'super weapon' it would be something that allows something resembling 'real' information into Russia so at very least regular Russians can see a bit of reality.
Can they manufacture faster than army abandons the armor? There have been at least three documented abandoned TOR SAM systems being just merely towed away by farmers, $25mil a pop.
Price per unit is closer to $10k, and they are being supplied from stocks which have a shelf-life anyway. So in terms of cash flow, it's not much of a cost.
1) Objectives were a rapid decapitation strike, air supremacy, and major incursions on several fronts, grabbing several cities.
2) His own forces are getting drawn out and mauled. Ukranians are just not losing units at the same rate.
3) Either way, momentum matters and Russians don't have it.
That said, they do have a lot of fodder to throw at Ukraine.
It seems likely that Ukraine can defend themselves if they are very effectively supported by the West on many fronts, but otherwise the Bear will just slowly suffocate them even as it looses a lot of blood itself.
Every anyone with military experience sees that column they have to be salivating. Has there ever been a time in history when there has been several divisions of units just sitting there, out in the open, waiting to be attacked. My gosh.
Those percentages might translate to a higher absolute number rate for the russians though, and we dont know how fast those rates are progressing either.
There is a public source that lists all publicly available sourced vehicles destroyed (i.e. images via Twitter) and it's very lopsided, that said, we are aware the Russian may not be posting vids of of their wins.
Specifically, the Russians need and want propaganda badly, and what they are showing in their own propaganda is minimal.
It's the 'fog of war' surely, and it's possible Ukranian losses are worse than we think ... but not matter what the reality is, Ukranian 'wins' are unprecedented. We know for sure what the 'minimum' looks like and even that is bad for Russia.
Am I the only one that doesn't understand why people are saying the invasion has gone slowly for Russia? Tanks cannot go at the speed of narratives. Even the invasion of Poland took over a month and they were invaded from both sides by gigantic modern militaries. Ukraine is the second largest country in all of Europe and Russia has captured quite a substantial part of it already. Even half a year to capture all of Ukraine would be an incredible military accomplishment.
The agencies competent enough to know (or guess) certainly aren't going to tell anyone.
It is absolutely possible to get high on your own supply (of authoritarianism, propaganda, and shooting messengers). So it is entirely possible upper echelons of the Russian Military tell Putin what he wants to hear because anyone who doesn't gets an unscheduled dose of Polonium.
It is also possible they are deliberately slow-rolling for various reasons: legitimate supply line issues, testing the waters, being able to pull back if the west responds too strongly, they really just wanted to steal some territory, etc. Being an opportunist is hardly unique.
Perhaps the plan was to invade. If you take the capital within a few days yay: you annexed Ukraine and you'll be done and it will be old news before the west can really respond. If the west sends aircraft carriers and troops you claim you were just protecting ethnic Russians in the border areas. If the invasion bogs down or the economic cost gets too high sign a peace treaty that contains as much as you can get away with and play nice neighbor for a bit while you send in the undercover agents to try another regime change in 5-10 years when everyone has stopped paying attention.
Russia, much like the US, hasn't really faced off against a reasonably modern military with good training and decent weapons systems anytime in the recent past. Even though Ukraine has a smaller military they've been pouring a lot of effort into training, arming, and modernizing since the last time Russian decided to invade and take some territory in 2014. And it wasn't like they were rag-tag religious extremists or a guerrilla force prior to that - they weren't starting from zero.
If Putin and his cronies really did overestimated Russian military capabilities it is still entirely possible for Russia to win the same way the Soviets survived the Wehrmacht: Massive mobilization, throw bodies into the fire, then slowly slog it out for as many years as it takes. That is an option Ukraine doesn't really have. They can't mobilize the same level of industrial production and they can't sustain as many dead sons. No one really knows if top of the line western weapons would level the playing field vs what Russia's defense industry can make.
In the end it might come down to will: does Putin have the will to kill as many Russian soldiers as it takes? Would the rest of his cronies let him if he tried? Will the Russian military accept that? On the Ukrainian side how far are they willing to go? How many citizens will volunteer? How many modern western weapons can they get ahold of? Can they continue disrupting Russian communications and logistics?
As far as I know this is the closest to a true military faceoff using modern weapons and tactics as we've seen. Most recent conflicts have been very asymmetric at every level which doesn't make for apt comparisons.
Where is Putin getting the money for this massive mobilization, in WWII they had lease/lend with the US... China? I don't see where this benefits China unless they own half of Russia when they are done. Russia economy is smaller than some US states.
Or maybe they just don't really want to occupy Kyiv. They want to annex a crapton of Ukranian territory, extract a demilitarization commitment, declare victory, and flip the bird at NATO.
Occupying Kyiv means urban guerilla warfare and a lot of civilan deaths.
They don't want to occupy Kyiv, they want to threaten to occupy Kyiv. Which is exactly what this preposterously-slow convoy accomplishes.
By all accounts, those are obsolete. Putin might have needed to "use them up" in order to get his people on board for replacing them.
Franklin Roosevelt had the Navy's obsolete battleships all parked in Pearl Harbor when war was threatening in the Pacific. The all-important aircraft carriers were far away. Everyone in the US Navy understood how a successful attack would run, because it had been rehearsed twice already by the Navy itself.
“Obsolete” is about all the Russian defense industry can produce. Russia’s defense industry has struggled to produce modern fighters and equipment. Russia touted the new Su-57 fighter and T-14 Armata tank but have hardly delivered any. Most of what their defense industry can build is upgraded versions of Soviet-designed fighters and armor
How could they possibly hope to get this? A peace accord with demilitarization on the Ukrainian site would only be possible if the Ukrainians trusted Russia. But Russia did not feel bound to their former agreements on keeping Ukraine as a sovereign state. How could Ukraine be guaranteed not to be invaded completely after demilitarizating?
I don't claim to understand how (or if) Putin's mind works, but my theory is that he doesn't care if said agreement stands up to international scrutiny. It'll be a piece of paper that he treats as a license to invade again if he smells any weapons nearby.
I suspect the plan is to just keep increasing the pressure until this piece of paper materializes.
Maybe at some point Zelensky gets killed by "accident" and whoever takes over signs the piece of paper. Or that guy refuses and he turns up dead. It's a war zone, crazy shit will happen.
I really don't think it makes sense. The time to threaten occupying Kyiv was before the war. Now that they started, every day they can't take Kyiv is another public display of humiliation for the Russian army. Can't believe Putin actually wanted this outcome.
No, they wanted to quickly decaptiate the government, kill Zelensky and install Yanukovich, who is waiting in Minks to return.
Then, Putin will have re-established Ukraine as a vassal, and have a Neo Russian Empire which the Russian population will chauvinistically and enthusiastically accept. 'We have freed the Ukranians' is what they can tell themselves even though clearly the Ukrainians are willing to literally fight to the death indicates otherwise.
Correct in that they don't want to 'occupy' anything, that's expensive. They thought Ukraine would capitulate quickly.
Evidence for this points to the fact Putin had to call up Chechen units, marshall units from far away, get Bealurus soldiers involved, and the fact he's still losing a few aircraft every day and does not have air superiority, which surely he would like to have established.
There is a 'Hitler supporter' in every random group of 300 people you can assemble on the planet.
Those 'Angry Nationalists' would not have existed were it not for Putins constant interventions with Yanukovich and then the 2014 invasion.
No Putin intervention -> no Nazis.
FYI Zelenky was is joke, a turd, totally 'the wrong person' - his heroism is due to what he is doing, not what he was. Whatever kind of 'quesitonable leader' he was before, he is now 'Churchill'. He's a figure of history now.
Yep this is my guess as well. They don't want messy urban warefare, that's a public relations disaster. They want a strong negotiating position and to "make their point".
I am a Russian citizen, and I grew up in a military town in Far East. A place where the draft is the harshest, and which is the base of Pacific Fleet. A sad town called Vladivostok.
I still retain connections with my high school mates. A lot of them have parent in military, seamen, and frontier men.
The news of Putin's fiasco is spreading like wildfire among DOSes, ship crews, and in army barracks.
The navy been traditionally the most disciplined service branch of the military because ships almost always have actual officers to command, vs. NCOs in the army.
I can't preclude the possibility of a mutiny brewing there right now, as news of ships crews (yes, not even marine infantry, but actual ship crews, 3 star lieutenants) being forced into trains going to Ukraine came.
It's very hard to figure out what is really going on in Ukraine (though we have a 1/2 decent idea) - let alone how to grasp what Russians all over are thinking.
I would imagine the propaganda is effective at the same time Russians have to be cluing into the fact that this is 'not going well'.
The degree to which they comprehend that up to 1000 armoured vehicles destroyed is definitely a 'giant disaster' is hard to fathom, as few people can put that into context.
And at the same time, they have a lot of blood to spill, and, they know they have a lot of reserves in depth.
As a former Navy man, I can't imagine being told to go fight in some muddy field with a weapon I don't know how to use for a crazy leader with delusions of grandeur. I would find a way not to go.
It's Russian strategy to wait for the supply lines to move with the convoy.
They need to bridge more distance with not enough resupply trucks. So they wait from a secure distance to resupply the convoy. It's also at important intersections to cut off main roads.
"Improvements in command, control, joint action and coordination have also been made, as demonstrated in both Crimea and Syria, and during a number of large-scale exercises training for joint combined arms operations. A costly programme of rearmament has modernized available military equipment. Following a hiatus in the delivery and upgrading of military hardware lasting for more than a decade, the armed services' stocks of weaponry have been comprehensively replenished. The impact of technological renewal on the Russian military's ability to project power on a global level was demonstrated in Syria. At the same time, the country's capabilities for expeditionary operations remained limited. It is highly unlikely that it could supply sand sustain the scale of forces required for an operation comparable to the US coalition efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq."
--Bettina Renz, Russia's Military Revival, 2018, page 196, emphasis mine
I was making a joke. It's unfortunately, but most of the fakes come from the Ukrainian side - the like the heroic Snake Island solider, the girl showing how to drive an abandon Russian tank, or the model-turned-warrior, and other fakes.
The bulk of the US force hadn't even entered Iraq yet.
There was a huge traffic jam at the border — thousands of vehicles parked in parallel rows, nothing but columns of trucks, humvees, oil tankers, flatbed tucks, armored vehicles and vehicles of every stripe, from horizon to horizon.
I was hoping for some new info, but this article appears to be merely a rehash of every scrap of rumor and speculation that's come out over the past several days.
68 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadhttps://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/03/the-universa...
In 2010 or 2012 a large gas supply was found and Crimea was at the center of it.
Putin doesn't like the alternative solution for Europe and moved in to occupy Crimea as fast as possible.
Ukraine cut off water supply to the invaders. They were getting dry. And now he is looking for an excuse to invade a country.
NATO is a defensive measure, not an offensive one.
Putin is a bully that wants to keep his hold over Europe. Nothing more, nothing less.
It might be that the slow-rolled advance on Kyiv is meant to draw units away from the southern front Putin actually cares about.
The Russian’s also wouldn’t park themselves like that. They don’t have air dominance and from the numerous Ukrainian air strikes, it doesn’t seem like they have much idea of what’s above them at any given time. (They’re parked close together to stay under the umbrella of anti-aircraft weaponry.) The longer the convoy waits, the more time the Ukrainians have to prep to shell the convoy or hit it from the air.
This goes for other questions about the campaign. As a large conscript force still basically using the Soviet model, weak troops are often thrown into the fire early on to soften opposition. Likewise, reliance on artillery is a byproduct of the air force being stretched thin and not reinvesting in new equipment: air dominance and precision bombing missions are expensive, and Russia's military primarily focuses on maintaining its own sovereignty, thus most of the allocation is towards a defensive air war with support provided by ground-based rockets and shelling.
However, there are severe challenges still to be reckoned with, which support the idea of Russia remaining on the back foot. The reports of abandoned vehicles, disorganized troops and stretched supplies hold some credence; again, as a conscript army it's harder to pursue delegation of responsibility like a professional force. You are getting relatively less out of more troops simply due to lack of coordination. As well, Ukraine has a smaller force but has been spurred to rearm with the assistance of foreign aid and equipment since the 2014 invasion, getting access to some of the best technologies and training of NATO forces. So Ukraine has some significant battlefield advantages, and with the cutoffs to supply chains on Russia's end, from my viewpoint, while a Russian victory could still occur if they rout the forces in major cities, a slow, protracted conflict will definitely end in Russian defeat at significant cost to civilians. The next weeks will be critical.
That is statement begging for a source. Do you have one? What is Russia's "known doctrine"?
"The Russian army does not have enough trucks to meet its logistic requirement more than 90 miles beyond supply dumps. To reach a 180-mile range, the Russian army would have to double truck allocation to 400 trucks for each of the material-technical support brigades."
Task and Purpose has been doing some videos on the war in Ukraine, and they use that article to evaluate Russia's progress against those supply limitations[2], and basically it all lines up that Russian progress has been constrained by supply, and that the current pause is likely because of the next actions they will take[3].
[1] https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKFSK_9e-g4
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5BAZ2bBUzM
They tried to take Hostomel and airports SE and SW of Kyiva and failed. They were going for fast strikes.
The failed to get the other airports (tried to land a cargo plane and it was destroyed) - thought they go to Hostomel it was only by landing literally 100 assault helicopters with 1000 soldiers.
That is literally 1/2 of their entire rotary fleet for a single, risky operation.
Since then, they've been mauled over and over around the airport and have actually made negative or neutral progress for 5 days.
So it remains to be seen if the balance of force can move in one direction or the other, I really wish the West would do more to make it more decisive.
In the meantime, the USA can pay $100-200K (i.e. per javelin/stinger/mlaw etc.) to have a large chunk of Russian Amour sent to the dustbin with not much risk, that's not such a bad deal at all.
It's costs nearly a million dollars to train, prepare and support a lowly US soldier. Then multiply that by the fact every fighter has 5 admins somewhere in the chain backing him up i.e. commanders, support, communications, intelligence etc..
Especially given that it is basically 'riskless' i.e. no US soldiers will die.
$4B to wipe out the Russian Army? Deal of the Century.
In the 'long game' of attrition warfare, the West would actually win, that is actually the State Dept. Assessment - that Russia 'wins' in Ukraine but is ground down over 15-20 years and eventually loses.
Meanwhile, the US and West have more advanced, much more wealthy economies, and can send relatively cheap weapons to help grind Russia down.
Frankly, if we could have a 'super weapon' it would be something that allows something resembling 'real' information into Russia so at very least regular Russians can see a bit of reality.
1) Objectives were a rapid decapitation strike, air supremacy, and major incursions on several fronts, grabbing several cities.
2) His own forces are getting drawn out and mauled. Ukranians are just not losing units at the same rate.
3) Either way, momentum matters and Russians don't have it.
That said, they do have a lot of fodder to throw at Ukraine.
It seems likely that Ukraine can defend themselves if they are very effectively supported by the West on many fronts, but otherwise the Bear will just slowly suffocate them even as it looses a lot of blood itself.
Every anyone with military experience sees that column they have to be salivating. Has there ever been a time in history when there has been several divisions of units just sitting there, out in the open, waiting to be attacked. My gosh.
There is a public source that lists all publicly available sourced vehicles destroyed (i.e. images via Twitter) and it's very lopsided, that said, we are aware the Russian may not be posting vids of of their wins.
Specifically, the Russians need and want propaganda badly, and what they are showing in their own propaganda is minimal.
It's the 'fog of war' surely, and it's possible Ukranian losses are worse than we think ... but not matter what the reality is, Ukranian 'wins' are unprecedented. We know for sure what the 'minimum' looks like and even that is bad for Russia.
It is absolutely possible to get high on your own supply (of authoritarianism, propaganda, and shooting messengers). So it is entirely possible upper echelons of the Russian Military tell Putin what he wants to hear because anyone who doesn't gets an unscheduled dose of Polonium.
It is also possible they are deliberately slow-rolling for various reasons: legitimate supply line issues, testing the waters, being able to pull back if the west responds too strongly, they really just wanted to steal some territory, etc. Being an opportunist is hardly unique.
Perhaps the plan was to invade. If you take the capital within a few days yay: you annexed Ukraine and you'll be done and it will be old news before the west can really respond. If the west sends aircraft carriers and troops you claim you were just protecting ethnic Russians in the border areas. If the invasion bogs down or the economic cost gets too high sign a peace treaty that contains as much as you can get away with and play nice neighbor for a bit while you send in the undercover agents to try another regime change in 5-10 years when everyone has stopped paying attention.
Russia, much like the US, hasn't really faced off against a reasonably modern military with good training and decent weapons systems anytime in the recent past. Even though Ukraine has a smaller military they've been pouring a lot of effort into training, arming, and modernizing since the last time Russian decided to invade and take some territory in 2014. And it wasn't like they were rag-tag religious extremists or a guerrilla force prior to that - they weren't starting from zero.
If Putin and his cronies really did overestimated Russian military capabilities it is still entirely possible for Russia to win the same way the Soviets survived the Wehrmacht: Massive mobilization, throw bodies into the fire, then slowly slog it out for as many years as it takes. That is an option Ukraine doesn't really have. They can't mobilize the same level of industrial production and they can't sustain as many dead sons. No one really knows if top of the line western weapons would level the playing field vs what Russia's defense industry can make.
In the end it might come down to will: does Putin have the will to kill as many Russian soldiers as it takes? Would the rest of his cronies let him if he tried? Will the Russian military accept that? On the Ukrainian side how far are they willing to go? How many citizens will volunteer? How many modern western weapons can they get ahold of? Can they continue disrupting Russian communications and logistics?
As far as I know this is the closest to a true military faceoff using modern weapons and tactics as we've seen. Most recent conflicts have been very asymmetric at every level which doesn't make for apt comparisons.
https://twitter.com/LostWeapons/status/1499040883865391107
, somewhat corroborated by idiotic Lukashenko presentation now, entire operation was supposed to be completed in 15 days.
Occupying Kyiv means urban guerilla warfare and a lot of civilan deaths.
They don't want to occupy Kyiv, they want to threaten to occupy Kyiv. Which is exactly what this preposterously-slow convoy accomplishes.
Franklin Roosevelt had the Navy's obsolete battleships all parked in Pearl Harbor when war was threatening in the Pacific. The all-important aircraft carriers were far away. Everyone in the US Navy understood how a successful attack would run, because it had been rehearsed twice already by the Navy itself.
https://twitter.com/politblogme/status/1499868149776322563?s...
I seem to remember a $120 million F35 falling into the South China Sea a couple of weeks back. Easy come, easy go.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/navy-recovers-stealth-35-sou...
How could they possibly hope to get this? A peace accord with demilitarization on the Ukrainian site would only be possible if the Ukrainians trusted Russia. But Russia did not feel bound to their former agreements on keeping Ukraine as a sovereign state. How could Ukraine be guaranteed not to be invaded completely after demilitarizating?
I suspect the plan is to just keep increasing the pressure until this piece of paper materializes.
Maybe at some point Zelensky gets killed by "accident" and whoever takes over signs the piece of paper. Or that guy refuses and he turns up dead. It's a war zone, crazy shit will happen.
Then, Putin will have re-established Ukraine as a vassal, and have a Neo Russian Empire which the Russian population will chauvinistically and enthusiastically accept. 'We have freed the Ukranians' is what they can tell themselves even though clearly the Ukrainians are willing to literally fight to the death indicates otherwise.
Correct in that they don't want to 'occupy' anything, that's expensive. They thought Ukraine would capitulate quickly.
Evidence for this points to the fact Putin had to call up Chechen units, marshall units from far away, get Bealurus soldiers involved, and the fact he's still losing a few aircraft every day and does not have air superiority, which surely he would like to have established.
I doubt that and Zelensky is not really the problem. Go and inform yourself as to what is going on.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/04/how-zelensky-made-peac...
There is a 'Hitler supporter' in every random group of 300 people you can assemble on the planet.
Those 'Angry Nationalists' would not have existed were it not for Putins constant interventions with Yanukovich and then the 2014 invasion.
No Putin intervention -> no Nazis.
FYI Zelenky was is joke, a turd, totally 'the wrong person' - his heroism is due to what he is doing, not what he was. Whatever kind of 'quesitonable leader' he was before, he is now 'Churchill'. He's a figure of history now.
No Nuland intervention -> No putin intervention
So who is responsible?
I still retain connections with my high school mates. A lot of them have parent in military, seamen, and frontier men.
The news of Putin's fiasco is spreading like wildfire among DOSes, ship crews, and in army barracks.
The navy been traditionally the most disciplined service branch of the military because ships almost always have actual officers to command, vs. NCOs in the army.
I can't preclude the possibility of a mutiny brewing there right now, as news of ships crews (yes, not even marine infantry, but actual ship crews, 3 star lieutenants) being forced into trains going to Ukraine came.
It's very hard to figure out what is really going on in Ukraine (though we have a 1/2 decent idea) - let alone how to grasp what Russians all over are thinking.
I would imagine the propaganda is effective at the same time Russians have to be cluing into the fact that this is 'not going well'.
The degree to which they comprehend that up to 1000 armoured vehicles destroyed is definitely a 'giant disaster' is hard to fathom, as few people can put that into context.
And at the same time, they have a lot of blood to spill, and, they know they have a lot of reserves in depth.
They need to bridge more distance with not enough resupply trucks. So they wait from a secure distance to resupply the convoy. It's also at important intersections to cut off main roads.
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-still-has-significant-...
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ukraine-russia-war-fighter-...
The bulk of the US force hadn't even entered Iraq yet.
There was a huge traffic jam at the border — thousands of vehicles parked in parallel rows, nothing but columns of trucks, humvees, oil tankers, flatbed tucks, armored vehicles and vehicles of every stripe, from horizon to horizon.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iraqis-surrendering-in-hordes/#...