What's up with the comments? We don't get it. My only guess is you're claiming "sunken" is a verb that requires an actively chosen affirmative action to put the ship at the bottom?
You missed the relevant portion of the article, just before your quote:
> the Russian Ministry of Defense, confirmed for the first time that the Moskva had sunk, the warship apparently foundering in poor weather while attempts were being made to tow it back to port.
It has already been reported by Russian media. The loss part, not the "by Ukraine" part.
Although some of their news shows seem to be vowing for revenge against Ukraine while still parroting the Kremlin line about how the cause is being investigated.
This is the same playbook they are using for the Bucha murders - "it didn't happen" plays right alongside "it did happen but was perpetrated by the Ukranians". I've read it described as a scattergun approach: the lies don't have to be consistent, or even stand up to the slightest critical scrutiny, you just spew out as many as possible trusting that one will stick.
It was officially confirmed by the Russian defence department this morning. The official version: it sunk while it was being towed due to a storm (spoiler: there were no storms in the black sea at that time.)
My version: it sunk right away and they lied to save the face.
I looked at the nautical charts for Black sea[0]. It looks like the area near Odessa is quite shallow (less than 100m (~300ft) deep). I'll hazard that it was a total loss from a get go, but they towed it just far enough to be able to let it sink to deeper waters (like 1000+ m deep (~ 3000ft)).
The missile cruiser Moskva went down in the Black Sea while being towed to port, the Russian Defense Ministry said
The Russian missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, sank while being towed into port amid stormy sea conditions, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday. According to the Russian military, the warship’s hull had been damaged by an ammunition explosion, itself caused by a fire on board, on Wednesday.
Ukrainian officials claimed their forces had struck the vessel with anti-ship missiles. The Pentagon said it could not confirm the claim. A US drone circled above the cruiser on Thursday, monitoring its progress towards Sevastopol.
It was. I was fully expecting them to stick with their hilarious choice of words and say that "the ship had undergone unexpected exothermic oxidation and then took tactical depth" tho. What a disappointment that they did say "there was a fire" and "it sunk", they just didn't specify the cause of the fire.
According to the article it definitely will be a very significant event if it turns out to be the result of a Ukrainian missile attack which has not been confirmed.
I'm not sure how it could be confirmed that Ukrainian actions cause the ship to sink. Hardly likely that Russia will say so even if it is true.
Maybe someone with expertise in these matters could shed light on the question. Certainly there are more than a few people around the globe who are highly invested in knowing the answer to that one.
The Ukrainians were reportedly flying a Bayraktar TB2 drone nearby at the time (used as a spotter/distraction for their 2 Neptun anti-ship cruise missiles), and might have video footage. Whether they would want to release it is another story.
There could plausibly be intercepted audio of radio conversations among the Russian military.
Aside: The current Ukrainian gov’t response is pretty snarky: “Oleksiy Arestovych, aide to Zelensky administration chief of staff Yermak, likens fire at Russia’s flagship cruiser Moskva to blast at Belgorod fuel depot, says both happen to appear as some bad luck.”https://twitter.com/myroslavapetsa/status/151440038235680358...
Thank you, good points. Though IIRC the drone was reported to have been shot down but it could have transmitted footage before that happened. If Ukraine has audio recordings that would be very interesting, but as you say they might be reluctant to share it.
Ship trackers have noted that the remainder of the Russian black sea fleet has since moved further South [1]. If true, that's a fairly interesting indicator.
Thing is that although this attack was from a shore battery (assuming the Ukrainian account is true,) the Neptune missile is actually an air launch design. So unless the Russian navy moves out of range of an SU-27 or whatnot they're still vulnerable.
Iraq hit the US navy with missiles launched from a business jet. Given what we've seen to date the Ukrainians are at least as resourceful.
Bad time to be on a Russian warship in the Black Sea.
Not that I’m any expert, but it sounds pretty much like you are incorrect?
When deployed, a Neptune coastal defence system comprises a USPU-360 truck-based mobile launcher, four missiles, a TZM-360 transport/reload vehicle, a RCP-360 command and control vehicle, and a special cargo vehicle. The system is designed to operate up to 25 kilometres (16 mi) inland of the coastline*
You'll note in the link you cite that the missile used in this system is a derivative of the Kh-35 anti-ship cruise missile, which Russia can launch from most of their combat jets and various helicopters, several of which are also operated by Ukraine. The missile is fundamentally an air launch design. When launched from a ship, shore battery or helicopter a booster is used to accelerate the missile to cruise speed. A booster is unnecessary when launched from a high speed aircraft.
Now, I don't know whether Ukraine has retained air launch capability in the derivative, but that is plausible. I do know that war motivates tremendous initiative, so if not you can bet they're working on it.
Ahh I see. Still, seems like it still isn’t that correct to call the Neptune an air launch? Like, we don’t know, but clearly from the available info, the Ukrainians have engineered it to be a ground launch. I mean, it requires 3 other vehicles besides the launcher to even launch it. Or so Wikipedia says, which I’ll admit is putting a lot of faith in Wikipedia
However, later reporting has asserted that the attacking aircraft was a Dassault Falcon 50 business jet which had been modified with a radar and missile hardpoints to carry two AM-39 Exocet missiles for anti-shipping operations.
What a brilliant guerilla-style strategy! I am surprised that Ukraine has not considered the same... but maybe they do not have anything like the Exocet in their arsenal.
Pretty sure Ukraine would love to make that happen. If they did that Ukraine probably wouldn't care if people thought sinking other Russian ships didn't constitute proof Ukrainians sank this one.
Ukraine may not have more Neptun missiles. They were accepted into military use just weeks before the war started. Only 1 launching unit has been produced, and only a few missiles could be assembled from parts because the manufacturing facility was destroyed by Russia's cruise missiles in the first days of the war.
The scarcity may explain why Ukraine waited for 50 days to hit the cruiser. It was an "all or nothing" moment.
Also, there were reports that Ukrainian navy used 1 Neptun missile to hit a smaller ship, frigate "Essen", with less success.
Who do you expect to confirm it? Ukraine? They did it. Russia? They will never ever admit it. The US? They might not have technical means for that despite lots of flying surveillance assets in that area.
So which reflects worse on Russia's military? If it was sunk by an accidental fire on board, or if it was sunk by a Ukrainian missile attack? Either way it seems like a huge loss for them.
Remember Russia's Kursk submarine accident? Where the biggest and most dangerous nuclear submarine in the world sank because of faulty welds on a training torpedo that leaked gas and caused the explosion of the torpedo compartment, causing the submarine to sink and the death of everyone on board because Russia refused to admit the accident and refused help from western partners? Yeah.
It's either defeat by Ukraine or Kursk 2. And they seem to prefer the latter, even though this is likely to be even worse given that the Moskva has five times the number of crew members.
It's easy to see why they spin it this way if you watch at least one program of Vremya or similar Russian "news" or read Putin's article on Ukraine from last year. They don't consider Ukraine a 'real' country, and Ukrainians as normal people. The supremacism, bigotry and entitlement to Ukraine is mind blowing, and unfortunately quite a number of Russians agree.
So it will always be the West's fault, or an accident but they will never admit to a defeat by Ukrainians as it will challenge their supremacist views. I expect next they will claim that it wasn't a Neptun missile, but maybe a British Harpoon, or why not even a CIA sabotage operation. And they cannot help themselves not to provoke and draw in Western countries that wouldn't care less about Eastern Europe.
This type of thinking is already playing out on Russian TV where the failure of Russia to capture Kiev in three days is explained by Western arms and training even they were already known before the declaration of the "Special Military Operation".
It gives me hope that supremacists, bigots and bullies lose because they underestimate their opponents.
And at the same time overestimate their own capabilities. Both history and life experience teach us that more often than not failure is an outcome of inadequate self-observation. Imagined prowess based on mistaken assumptions is so often the source of defeat even more than losing to a genuinely superior adversary. It's the difference between arrogant blindness and courage under fire, the first is a dishonest prelude to failure, the second affirms reality and probability of success.
I think the missile attack is much worse. They just lost 1) a flagship, 2) named "Moskva", 3) to a country with no navy, and 4) no airforce capable of carrying anti-ship missiles.
Bonus points: 1) parallels with Tsushima, and 2) the fact that this was the "russian warship" from the meme, and that it went precisely where it was told.
Both are pretty bad. Navy which flagships blow up becasue of poor maintenance is a laughing stock, especially when it's not even capable of building a new one.
I'll also add for one more piece of irony that the "Moskva" used to be called the "Slava", and was built in Mykolaiv in Ukraine (when it was part of the Soviet Union).
In fact Russia as a country now has no shipyards capable of building anything larger than frigates, so this missile cruiser is actually something beyond the technology of Russia to produce right now. All of the Soviet Union's (and Russia's) aircraft carriers were in fact built in Mykolaiv as well for example. Their main class of Aircraft Carrier in the cold war was the "Kiev" (Kyiv) class.
Well, a lot of Soviet military, naval and aerospace tech that's now used by Russia was developed and built in what is now Ukraine. They had many top design bureaus there.
Which is why Russia felt cheated for having an independent Ukraine that's not a Russian puppet state as it meant the loss of highly important defense supply chains.
> Which is why Russia felt cheated for having an independent Ukraine that's not a Russian puppet state as it meant the loss of highly important defense supply chains.
It wasn't a loss until Russia occupied Crimea and the Donbas, before that there was extensive collaboration, even after the fall of Yanukovich. Instead of having the vital supply chains in a non-puppet but relatively friendly neighbor, they cut their own noses off to spite Ukraine and lost access to stuff like marine engines they simply can't replace.
5) this was a missile cruiser designed to give air cover to other ships. There is no way two Ukrainian modules are supposed to go through it’s air cover. I read the send TB2’s along to overwhelm the air defenses, but this is just utterly embarrassing.
They nearly burned down their only Kuznetsov aircraft carrier and the dock where it was undergoing repairs just two years ago. Being hit by enemy missiles is an improvment.
Missile attack. On paper the Russian missile defense systems should be able to easily defeat 2 missiles like the neptune. Their CIWS etc are pretty good. On paper.
Accidental fire on board is a freak accident that’s not replicatable. Missile attack means that someone has either competely lied about their capabilities or has corrupted and sold the self defense systems. Or both.
The latter means Russian ships in general are now a way easier targets and hence smaller threats. Hence Russia has every incentive to hide this.
Normally, I don't like this kind of "source please" reply.
However, I feel that CIWS is mostly defensive security theatre. How often are do they actually work in the real world? The number of attacks on vessels carrying CIWS are so small. As a result, CIWS hardly get any real world practice. Events would be studied by military and manuf., then software updates made. As a counterpoint: Think how many cruise missiles have been fired in the last 50 years -- lots(!). There are plenty of case studies for military and manuf. to improve software. (I assume this is also how anti-missile systems are improved, like the US Patriot system.)
FYI about this ship (Moskva):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cruiser_Moskva
Says CIWS system is: AK-360
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-630
See section "Service history" for some *highly* speculative writing!
>Normally, I don't like this kind of "source please" reply.
Why not? We are allowed to ask for the sources to claims that are not obvious or easily verifiable, like the ones regarding weapons systems of a secretive country.
The sources posted are pretty much the only we even can have. Naturally for these kind of weapons systems we essentially only have the public information, that includes western weapons systems.
And all of them naturally boast that they can defend against well, everything. Only when something is actually tested in the field we can see how well it works.
Hence Russians have an incentive to deny that it was due to weakness of their CIWS. Or, perhaps more probably, an incentive to say to Putin that they didn't corrupt all the maintenance money and it was just an accident.
Nice reference. Your example is more about anti-missile missiles. I was talking more about the machine gun plus radar setup. I find it hard to believe these work very well in combat situations.
> On paper the Russian missile defense systems should be able to easily defeat 2 missiles like the neptune.
Mokva air defence radar only looks one way.
They made it look away from the coast using a drone, and then launched missiles when it turned away from the coast — this is how I imagine it happened.
While the Bayraktars don't have stellar maneuverability they are stealthy and relatively small. They also don't use radar for targeting. For a ship to have good defense against such drones the radar's software needs to understand a drone's signatures and the crews also need to be trained for the same.
Given the Russian army's current level of performance and the Russian navy's...entire history, I don't have any trouble believing the Moskva was beguiled by a drone.
They have a small RCS, but they're slow as a dog, and signals at sea are significantly easier to interpret given that there's infinitely less spurious reflection and radio sources. Maybe the bad weather played a bigger role in that than I've seen accounted for. But even with detection at close range, any modern heat-seeking SAM should have absolutely no problem taking it down before it drops anything funny on target.
Search radars have to handle a lot of noise and signals from a number of sources. The radar systems need to be programmed to understand returns from different target types and their operators need to be trained to understand the readings. My point is based on the Russian navy's ignominious history it's unlikely their radars and operators have adequate capability to detect any aircraft or weapons that didn't exist in the 1970s when they were first designed.
Additionally even if drones were detected the Moskva may not have been equipped with heat seeking munitions. Even if they had them, a drone at stand-off distance can easily be out of range of their targeting. The drones also only need to occupy the ship's attention long enough to distract it from the incoming anti-ship missiles. Even if the drones are shot down it's a small price to pay to disable or sink the Russia's biggest naval asset in the Black Sea.
Finding things even in calm seas is hard. Aiming at those things is harder. Hitting those things with a fast moving thing is harder still. Poor equipment increases those difficulties as does poor crew capability. All of those combined makes for single use submarines.
Indeed, which is why the Patriot air defence system the US has is a joke, and why some countries in NATO ( like Turkey) buy or keep the Russian equivalents (S-300/400).
Either way, the Russian military leadership looks incompetent.
I would think that it would be more important to Ukraine from a morale standpoint if the missile attack was the cause. To take out the flagship of the Russian fleet with a weapon of Ukrainian design that hadn't previously been proven in battle... that's big. I would expect morale to be a key concern for them given the punishment they're enduring to get these victories.
Russia's rotten downfall is impressive to watch. I'm Ukrainian/Armenian who grew up in Russia in the 80s, I had always assumed that the military would at least stay relevant when the economy isn't. It's just been the pride of the country for centuries and to some extent even ingrained in Russian DNA that I could not see that changing going forward. I had grandparents and uncles in the Soviet military and I saw the pride in them. Now we see the bottom completely fall out as it's become eroded by decades of preposterous corruption. You have to be one special piece of shit to destroy such legacy and to find a reason, whatever it might be, to attack what I consider their own blood relatives in Ukraine.
>You have to be one special piece of shit to destroy such legacy
This isn't the cause by the actions of a single piece of shit (Putin) but the consequences of unchecked sistemic corruption that spans for decades across the entire government apparatus.
I laughed out loud when I saw pictures of the ERA plates on Russian tanks were actually filled with cardboard because what should have been the Russian army modernization, is now parked in the biggest most luxurious yachts in the world and in the most desirable real estate in Europe and North America.
So, as a European who's country had been under forced Russian occupation, and the puppet communist regime there caused scars that will still last for decades, I'm chuck full of joy to see Russia's army being crippled from inside by it's own corrupt system and the greed of it's own leaders. 10/10
I already have my apartment at 20C and can probably tolerate a bit lower if it means starving the Russian army and saving Ukrainian lives.
Still, I expected the Russian government propaganda to spin this news into something like "Heroic Moskva cruiser managed to successfully destroy two enemy Neptune missiles with its hull, causing it to be promoted to the rank of submarine ".
> unchecked sistemic[sic] corruption that spans for decades across the entire government apparatus
Centuries, really. The inveterate kleptocracy that is Russia goes back further than the Soviets. The only real crime that exists for the Russian elite is stealing more than allowed. That was true for the Boyars, the Nomenklatura and it remains true for the oligarchy.
There was some corruption in Soviet Union (like in most countries around the world with the exception of economically developed or/and democratic countries) but it was not fatal.
Corruption in modern Russia is unique to Putin's regime - he used it (and still uses) as a tool to concentrate power - he puts in position of power only corrupt officials as a mean to get full loyalty - officials not loyal enough can be easily blackmailed, secret services have enough "kompromat" to put any government official into jail but are waiting for a signal from above. Corruption is the foundation for what in Russia called the "vertical of power", which essentially means that a person in a power structure have almost unlimited (limited only by Putin, but not by the law) power over people below.
> There was some corruption in Soviet Union ... but if[sic] was not fatal
It was actually fatal. I've studied the corruption that emerged under the Soviets; it was systemic and, in fact, necessary to mitigate the crippling adversities created by Soviet ideology. It is the primary reason the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago.
I was born in the Soviet Union, read book about Soviet economy and political system (albeit not scientific ones) and have a different take. Corruption is a broad term and one can probably say it was a contribution factor, but may take is that inefficiency of economy and misguided foreign policy (including Afghanistan invasion) were the fatal flaws.
When selecting who to delegate power to, all soviet leaders selected people who are loyal to them and suitable for the job. Loyalty was more important than competence so government was full of incompetent people, but competence was not a disqualifying factor so some of them was able to do the job.
In Putin's power structure people who not steal and cannot be easily blackmailed are not promoted high enough. Being not corrupt _is_ a disqualifying factor. Putin at least in the beginning of his career maintained visibility of a country with the rule of law, so instead jailing opponents on a whim he jailed them for breaking the law, but the law was enforced selectively only for ones who are not fully loyal.
As a result in modern Russia personal enrichment is a much bigger problem that it was in Soviet Union. Soviet nomenklatura [1] was rich compare to poor population but their quality of life was not much better than for upper-middle class in the US. The same nor the case for modern Russia.
Failure of soviet economy as I know was not result of corruption - much more resources were wasted than stolen. Unfortunately I cannot provide any sources here - all I read was in Russian and I cannot find translations to English.
I've seen this inefficiency myself in form of many thousands tons of trees which were cut so harvesting organization would meet KPI for amount of harvested wood but left to rot in the forest because an organization which should transport the wood had not enough capacity to do this (but likely transported all volume on paper, which you may say is corruption, but resources were wasted, not stolen).
Dude, the countries behind Iron Curtain had so much corruption it was insane. In a place where you have trouble buying meat or fruits the only way to get it is to bribe someone and for that someone to lie and/or steal to get it for you.
My country was behind an iron curtain and one of the motto's of that time was: "If one doesn't embelish from the state it means one's embelishing from their family".
Even with democracy this mentality won't fully go away for generations. Russia continued on that trajectory to a worse state.
I would also take glee in this, were it not for the substantial (presumably at least partially functional) nuclear arsenal held by this dog being backed into a corner…
I do entertain a faint hope that the rot has also infected Russia's nuclear arsenal, rendering some noticeable fraction of it inoperable or otherwise inert, but not enough to act on it.
From the perspective of a Strategic Rocket Forces commander, what's the upside to actually using the maintenance budget for maintenance? None. It's free money for the taking.
If the US starts WWIII, nobody will be left alive in Russia to care. If Russia starts WWIII, likewise, and it's better if the warheads don't work anyway. Meanwhile, that dacha on the Black Sea coast isn't going to pay for itself, nor is the boat that comes with it.
I've seen this in the military during the winter where a conscript complained he was cold so the drill instructor had him strip to his bare ass and stay like that for 2 minutes then asked:
> because what should have been the Russian army modernization, is now parked in the biggest most luxurious yachts in the world and in the most desirable real estate in Europe and North America.
What worries me is that this is happening in the U.S. as well.
Not stealing directly but US military industrial complex is a huge money sink which delivers much much less than civilian counterparts for the same money. F-35 story is a shame IMHO.
Corruption is a big issues in the west but compared to what's happening in Russia and ex-USSR countries, it's not even in the same ballpark, hell, it's not even in the same planet.
In the west we have free press looking into it and exposing the theft, plus, the theft in the west has very complex schemes to make it look legit on the surface and to make sure nothing sticks to our Teflon politicians, but in Russia they don't need to worry about any red tape BS, they can just shove their hands in the public purse and take as much as they want and go directly to the Lamborghini dealership or the casino without any accountability, and if any reporter looks too deeply into their theft, they get death threats or even death through very suspicious circumstances.
The problems on the Joint Strike Fighter program were caused more by flawed analysis of costs and military requirements than by outright corruption. Very little funding was stolen, and not many individuals have gotten personally wealthy from the program. Lockheed-Martin is now delivering an F-35 Block 4 product that, despite a few remaining minor flaws, substantially meets the customers' requirements. It's just that what the customers thought they wanted back in 1996 no longer aligns with what they actually need today.
Contracts are definitely awarded to companies based on their political connections, and not necessarily merits. Look at the whole Halliburton/Cheney shitshow in Iraq for a recent example.
We're talking $40 billion worth of (cost-plus!!!) contracts awarded to a company that was widely viewed as incompetent by the soldiers on the ground, followed by the vice-president getting a position on the board of said company when he retired. This is after he got a $30 million golden parachute after leaving them in 2001.
I think all big empires eventually collapse under the weight of excessive greed, systemic corruption and cronyism, where everyone from the top to the bottom is busy stuffing their own bags while everything crumbles around them ("f*ck you, I've got mine, go get yours")
It's just that the US manages to prolong this much longer than others.
More to your point, the book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a scathing indictment on this system, and how incompetent apparatchiks were chosen over less politically connected entities, and how this had a direct hand in the result of the occupation. Strongly recommended!
I mean you can definitely argue for inefficiency in the MIC, but you don't see people literally just stealing millions from the allocated budget and shifting it to their bank accounts or megayachts.
It’s happening both at some scale and in some analogous ways. With regards to the latter, wealth and funds are ever shifting more and more to the ultra wealthy and corporations. Corporations and wealthy individuals get massive, massive tax breaks, government contracts, or subsidies. I consider this analogous to stealing from the common people. For the former, the U.S. has an ever increasing population of corrupt politicians and officials.
I am not saying it’s an identical situation, which seems to be the assumption of some. However, the oligarchical nature of the U.S. is not slowing down.
It's become clear to me that a lot of us who grew up during the cold war, kept thinking that Russia was still as much of a threat as the Soviet Union was, which is why so many of us are surprised at this turn of events.
But the Soviet Union fell thirty years ago, an entire generation ago. The Soviet Union had 280 million people, more than the US had at the time. Big. Scary. But Russia today has only 140 million people. Over half the population just up and left when given the chance. They said "thanks, but no thanks" to Moscow.
Sure, Russia still has a big military budget, but their GDP isn't that great. Their GDP is much smaller than Italy's, alone. Smaller than France's, alone. Smaller than Germany's, alone. Hell, even the five Nordic countries have a higher combined GDP than Russia has. Growing up in the Nordics during the cold war meant having to think about Russia as an enormous big bad who could crush us completely if they wanted to. But now, our combined economies are larger.
Russia is corrupt, and has been corrupt for an entire generation. And it's been corrupt on a scale that is unprecedented compared to itself in the past, and compared to the rest of Europe. We complain about the military-industrial complex and how much waste there is, but military contractors in the west actually deliver stuff, whereas all the corrupted half-assery of the Russian military is being exposed now.
The combined defence budget of the EU is about 4 times larger than Russia's. Since the end of the cold war, the EU has been prosperous, peaceful, and happy. We've invested in our defence and grown stronger over the last thirty years, while Russia has declined.
We in the EU have over three times the population, over four times the military budget, and ten times the GDP of Russia. We have nukes and tanks and aircraft carriers and submarines and stealth fighters of our own. And yet so many still view Russia as a threat, as a bigger and stronger foe.
This debacle sure has been eye-opening to me, and I hope it's been that way for everyone else stuck in the cold-war mentality.
>The combined defence budget of the EU is about 4 times larger than Russia's. Since the end of the cold war, the EU has been prosperous, peaceful, and happy. We've invested in our defence and grown stronger over the last thirty years, while Russia has declined.
Simple. The EU is not military united but it's pretty much a "every man for himself" kind of thing outside of NATO or a direct attack, but the EU or NATO is currently not under attack so some people see Ukraine as "more of you problem than a me problem"… so other than sending some aid to Ukraine most people don't want to go to war with Russia or suffer crippling energy shortages for Ukraine.
EU leaders are also not immune from kleptocratic greed and external and internal corruption.
Austria is more than happy to keep pumping money into Russia in exchange for cheap gas, as that gas runs 80% of their industry, and several elite Austrian politicians were given top jobs on boards of Russian oil and gas companies to lobby for them and against nuclear or other alternatives, or have straight up offered their support to Russian oligarchs in under-the-table business deals ( the infamous "Ibiza scandal").
Good luck replacing that gas on a whim after several decades of Russian lobbying that lead to the current status quo.
> but military contractors in the west actually deliver stuff,
Deliver stuff nobody needs? LOL, the American oligarchs aren't much better. Just because they use a different word (lobbying instead of bribing) doesn't make it any less of a corrupt system.
The process was messy, but in the end the US Army got a weapons system that actually worked pretty well. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle was used in multiple conflicts and has had a good operational record.
>LOL, the American oligarchs aren't much better. Just because they use a different word (lobbying instead of bribing) doesn't make it any less of a corrupt system.
At least in the US, via lobbying, the bribes are transparent and you can follow the money and see who's pulling the strings.
This is much better than everything being done under the table and assuming there is no corruption because we don't have lobbying, like the classical misconception we have in Europe.
When thieves run the country, why do you think the army won't be rotten all way through and steal all they could as well filling their own pockets instead of maintaining quality? Putin caught his own tail in this.
Because Putin probably received assurance from his yes-men that the army is in tip top condition and they were so disconnected from reality, they probably didn't expect those down the food chain to be as thieving as they were at the top.
I assume Putin has already gulaged some scapegoats that his cronies found responsible for this current mess.
He clearly will, since he can't show any success in the war. So he has to show success in finding who is guilty in the failure (to make it not him), uncovering some "conspiracy" and such.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that those being thrown under the bus have mysteriously "committed suicide" by shooting themselves in the back five times before jumping off a bridge or driving head on into a tree with no brakes, so they wouldn't talk.
I understand and have sympathy with the cheering; but something rings false in my ears.
If the Russians are so weak and incompetent then why is nearly every European country doubling their military expenditures? And countries that have been neutral through the second world war now rushing into NATO?
I fear that the Russians will be pushed into a more "traditional" warfare with heavy air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow.
1) No one expected them to be so weak and miserable. Note that every western analyst gave it at most 3 days (some might have said 7, but no one said more) before Kyiv would fall. Note also that even over a month into the invasion, and it making no progress, the narrative in western circles was that it was a result of a temporary logistics problem and/or using conscripts as cannon fodder. The professionals would come anytime soon and then Kyiv would be taken.
2) Nukes.
3) Even though the Russian military appears increasingly incompetent, they are still capable of creating immense damage and destruction.
This prediction is correct for pre-war Ukraine. We lost Crimea without a fight. Now we have 8 years of experience and will to fight, because everyone lost somebody they know. However, Ukrainian army is poorly equipped. 200 thousand reservists cannot join Ukrainian army because of lack of equipment. We are trying to squeeze the last few drops from our reserves.
We badly need new trucks. I have a driver (I'm lieutenant), but have no truck, because my truck was used in Chornobyl, so it's not operable now because of 30 years of out of service at conservation. If I have a truck, I can swap my cabin from Chornobyl truck to new truck and create a working communication station, but I cannot find a cheap truck to buy.
If you have a barely working truck, please, sent it to Ukraine, Rivne, Ukrainian Army, 55 OPZ, 1 battalion.
Not sure if this is serious, but how would a private individual send a truck? I have friends trying to transport supplies to Ukraine and they are finding it is quite difficult to make deliveries.
I have no idea. Before the war, cars from the USA were delivered by sea in shipping containers to Odessa. Now, Odessa in blocked by Russians, so cargo must be shipped to EU first, and then transported to Ukraine via Poland. There are some Ukrainian firms, which are providing logistic. I can also ask my mentor from Britain to help with delivery. I put my email into profile details, if you have a truck for me, because I badly need a truck. I'm OK with the truck from Chornobyl, because we are living close to Chornobyl anyway, but we cannot repair it because of lack of parts and because the main quarters were left due to risk of missile strike. We are all in the fields now.
These Europeans are coming out of a phase of almost no perceived threat, so they have to increase spending even if they don't think the Russians are very good.
Plus you have to plan for the adversary being better than what you have evidence for, that's just prudent.
Yeah it's like an inflatable dinghy. You have it around in storage until you need it. Germany at the moment has just declared they will inflate their military.
1. Russian military performs worse than was expected by western experts but still has enough explosives to flatten out large swaths of land - as we see they don't care at all about collateral damage or outright target civilians as an easy prey.
2. NATO military was not really tested in full scale combat and can perform worse than expected too.
This is not really a poorly performing military. This is a terribly incompetent plan proudly made by only 5 people.
NATO has had plenty of logistical failures but it doesn't narrow it's planning to total top-down so those failures are dealt with and worked around by elements in the middle and on the field.
Russia seems to be much weaker than expected but definitely they are not harmless. Ukraine fared much better than expected but they have seen enormous destruction on their lands.
Also, Europe was depending on the idea that if you integrate Russian economy with the Western economy there wouldn't be reason to wage wars, just the way EU integrated historic enemies into completely peaceful union therefore there's no need to maintain large armies. Unfortunately, the method that works for EU countries doesn't work for Russia(too corrupt? too autocratic? too eastern mentality? who knows) and as a result European countries now increase their budgets for their defence.
I think it's tragic. Would have been much better if Russians sent their gas as Europe gradually transitions into renewables and Europe sent their produce to Russians and improve their lives as they diversify their economy as the fossil energy is phased out. It should have worked, EU definitely tried make it work.
"Unfortunately, the method that works for EU countries doesn't work for Russia"
In general the method works, there were(are) deep economic ties growing between germany and russia for example to mutual benefit. And those sectors are devastated because of the war and were really not in favour of it.
But Russia is a bit bigger than slovakia for example, so some economic ties were apparently not enough.
Also, most of the russia population received an decrease in living standard after the soviet union fell, so democracy was off with a bad start. When your individual life is shit, it is a comfort knowing you are at least part of something great. The RUS empire. Only, that in reality it is just a brutal, rusty moloch, which more people are hopefully seeing now. And yes, it is tragic. We now have war and even if there will be peace eventually, a new iron curtain with mines will once again divide europe.
hutzlibu says >"When your individual life is shit, it is a comfort knowing you are at least part of something great. The RUS empire. Only, that in reality it is just a brutal, rusty moloch, "<
So once again we are in a "war of ideas". I hope we do not face a "new iron curtain" as you say, that would indeed be a shame.
I held so many hopes for the Russian people but foolishly thought they had escaped the prisons of thought that might bind them. So many outstanding people, some of the best writers, mathematicians, and scientists, generations of civilization and a history worth mining for gems.
I now see more clearly that the Russians (and other peoples in that region of the Earth) are neither Western nor Eastern in thought but have their own very different perceptions of the world. And unfortunately many of them seem to suffer an undeserved diminished sense of self-worth and a desire for recognition (some call it "thymos") that is perceived as not forthcoming from foreigners, whether truly present or not.
I have always believed that any Russian or "Eurasian" (if I may use that term to denote the broader groups of peoples in the region) person was as worthy or better, good or bad, strong or weak, kind, and good ... as any person whatsoever. But I fear b/c of the West's indifference and yes, the West's negligence of these peoples after the breakup of the Soviet Union, we have, as a group, not sufficiently shown the respect that is due them. We needed a "Marshall Plan" for the fall of the Soviet Union, if only to offer it.
> Russia seems to be much weaker than expected but definitely they are not harmless.
I mean, who want to test how harmful a slingshot is if they can't retaliate?
Russia has an artillery based army and Ukraine doesn't have the long range weapons to destroy it, so Russia can just destroy city after city from a safe distance.
Much weaker, but not harmless indeed.
Plus, the US already send 25% of its Javelin and Stinger missiles to Ukraine and it will take many years to replenish those stocks.
Can all countries in the vicinity of Ukraine receive such numbers of missiles and support?
No, hence we need to ramp up military spending and production in case Russia gets even wilder ideas.
Russia still has the sheer numbers. Wikipedia lists
Active personnel 1,014,000
Reserve personnel 2,000,000
They only deployed less than 100k in Uraine, and it's tied one of the largest armies in Europe.
Europe hasn't had an army to speak of for decades (and for a good reason). So "doubling military expenditures" for most of Europe is "going from nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
> air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow.
They don't have to be "pushed". They have been basically doing that since the war started.
> Europe hasn't had an army to speak of for decades (and for a good reason). So "doubling military expenditures" for most of Europe is "going from nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
Where do you get these claims? Most European countries are part of NATO which demands a modernized standing army as part of its membership requirements.
While it's true that most countries don't spend the ridiculous amount of their wealth on arms as USA does, the armies of European countries are far from not existing.
1. Most countries spend significatly less than is required by NATO. Nato requires 2% of GDP to be spent on defense. In the EU, only 7 countries are at that threshold, or above it, and of those Finland is not in NATO.
2. France has the largest active military personnel at 200k, and of those, 17k are "prepared for deployed and sustained operations".
At this point all of EU couldn't get an army to respond to Russia's current force engaged in Ukraine.
> NATO […] demands a modernized standing army as part of its membership requirements
This is not strictly true and there’s no such legal requirement, only a political one. Case in point id Iceland, which is a NATO member but has no armed forces to speak of.
They don't have sheer numbers unless they go full mobilization. They already put almost entire Russian ground force, which is 280k, into battle almost 200k of it went into Ukraine with initial invasion force. And since then they've been moving everything they have left into Ukraine(military contingent from karabakh and abkhazia regions, troops from far east etc.). 1 million is the capacity of their whole military, and ground troops that could be used in the invasion are only the fraction of it(airforce is useful, but can't be used as ground troops, fleet isn't that useful TBH and only fraction of it is in the Black sea right now and they can't get more there). And they need at least someone to guard their borders(and Russia's borders are vast).
This isn't enough to win. Ukrainian Ground Forces were 200k at the beginning of this war, for comparison. And Ukraine have been conducting mobilization since the war started, so it's larger by a lot now and will grow with each day of war.
200k reservists cannot join Ukrainian army because of lack of equipment and money. I have no truck, for example, so I cannot move a few tonnes of communication equipment rapidly, so my combat-readiness is low.
> And Ukraine have been conducting mobilization since the war started
Yes, but the original question was, "Why is Europe increasing defense spending". The sum total of Europe's deployed forces is smaller than Ukraine's was before this war.
> So "doubling military expenditures" for most of Europe is "going from nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
Russia's defence budget is ~50 billion dollars per year.
The combined defence budgets of all of Europe is ~200 billion dollars per year, which is four times as large as Russia's. And that's from before the Ukraine invasion. The bulk of that defence budget belongs to NATO members who already have decades of experience in working together and having a shared command structure. We outspend Russia four to one, and if all European NATO members bump their defence budgets to the 2% requirement, we're gonna outspend Russia seven to one.
Going from four times the defence budget or Russia to seven times the defence budget of Russia is nowhere near going from "nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
> Active personnel 1,014,000
Oh no, a million demotivated peasants with rusty Soviet-era weapons! Whatever shall we do? Best we roll over and let Russia invade and take whatever they want!
You're also stuck in the cold war mentality that Russia is still as big and strong as the Soviet Union was, and it's just not true anymore. Europe has three times the population, four times the defence budget, and ten times the GDP of Russia. Russia has had three decades of unparalleled corruption and decay, and we're supposed to feel threatened?!?
No. Stop. Re-evaluate. Russia is no longer an existential threat to Europe.
The total "active troops prepared for deployment and sustained operations" in Europe is less than 40k [1]. That's at least 3x fewer than Russia has committed to this war. That's less than Ukraine's deployed military before the war.
> Russia is no longer an existential threat to Europe.
If only I ever said anywhere whether I thought Russia was an existential threat to Europe. Stop. Re-evaluate. There's a specific point I was replying to.
The difference is that we have almost a thousand meteor ready, tens of thousands MICA and thousands of Scalp missiles. And our aces get 150 to 200h/yr of flight time, including training against F22 which are Su35 but actually good in dogfight. Russian pilots have mixed training and get less than 100 hours on plane. Without air support, you cannot go in an offensive war, even against 10k men. And Russia cannot go against our meteors with anything except their 10 su35(probably), of which at least 5 are prototypes(and they did loose the 11th against IR manpads, which is telling).
> The total "active troops prepared for deployment and sustained operations" in Europe
That's some goal post moving. You were explicitly talking about military expenditures, and your claim that Europe's military expenditures doubling is insignificant is completely laughable given that the current level is already 4x Russia's.
The only reason you pivoted to active troops, pretending we were talking about that all along, is because that's the only number that's bigger on the Russian side of the equation.
33k people is less than what Ukraine had deployed before the war started.
Countries bordering Russia have very few actively deployed forces. Sweden has 750 ground troops "ready for deployment and sustained operations". Seven hundred and fifty. Finland has ~1750.
> benefit in decentralized warfare that the NATO has been doing that Russia can't emulate
Those decentralized troops have to get to the conflict zones first.
This are correct numbers(for active part, reserve are far smaller - money issue) but they include army, navy and air force.
Also the larges part of any military are non combat support personnel. Weather its people building things or transporting them or fixing them. Also manning various stations. Providing security for military installation. Military police. Military intelligence. etc.
So out of 1m people russia only has around 250k combat troops. 190k of which are currently engaged in Ukraine.
And one of the reasons we see all this logistical problems is that Russia has too much combat troops (or too little support) for its support force. In other militaries its usually from 6 to 9 support people for every combat role.
Also remember SU was over 300M (and that without Warsaw pact nations). Russia is less than 150m.
So no Russia does not have endless supply of troops, unless they start mobilization.
European countries are ramping up expenditure simply because Russia has increased instability in Europe and they can't be trusted to uphold their treaties anymore. While its military has been embezzled into oblivion by the elite, Russia still has one of the largest standing armies.
Moreover, lots of proper military research projects have been done. It's the actual production where they run into the corruption bottleneck: that could be solved and the giant might awaken.
> European countries are ramping up expenditure simply because Russia has increased instability
Russia was/is spending something like 17% on military. Obviously they planned to use it at some point, I can't believe we were this dumb not to see it.
“Solving corruption” won’t fix the supply chain reliance on western components, now closed off via sanctions.
Russia can’t make special stuff if it can’t make boring stuff.
They can try import substitution from China but it would be difficult to move goods as the Trans-Siberian Railway is already at capacity trying to replace other goods, and even China may not be able to provide suitable replacements for parts manufactured in Europe.
> If the Russians are so weak and incompetent then why is nearly every European country doubling their military expenditures? And countries that have been neutral through the second world war now rushing into NATO?
I remember reading somewhere, maybe the Guardian, that:
- just 9% of the total russian forces are now deployed against Ukraine
- they thought it will be an easy victory so they sent the lowest grade troops they had.
You should check your sources. It is closer to 90% of russian forces that are capable of offensive action than to 9%. Military doesn't consist entirely of troops, the bulk of their fleet is useless for example(it can't move into Black Sea since Turkey blocked Dardanelles). Out of 280k of their ground forces almost 200k went into Ukraine with initial invasion and since then they've been sending a lot of reinforcements. So yeah, it's closer to 90%.
Contrary to the lowest grade, it seems that many elite forces were used : https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/destination-disaster-r... unfortunately they were deployed in an amateur way using a reckless plan. If the reinforcement strategy had come off then everyone would say that it was utterly brilliant, but gambles like this happen in war all the time. We like to venerate the ones that work and to talk about brilliant generals and the glamour of battle. In reality, as in this case they mostly fail and the troops get bogged down and killed.
The Russians have done a surprising and smart thing, which shows that someone in Moscow has the light on still. They've pulled out of the north and completely changed strategy - this shows a strategic flexibility that's really quite impressive, and unusual for a totalitarian regime. The problem that they have now is that the situation in the south is much more difficult than it would have been if they had gone for it at the outset. They don't have much of a reserve because Russia is so vast and the Russians have serious commitments at the border with China and North Korea and so on.
> The Russians have done a surprising and smart thing, which shows that someone in Moscow has the light on still. They've pulled out of the north and completely changed strategy
They were unable to effectively resupply troops in the North, who were out of food, low on fuel, and lacking supply trucks. Ukranians blew up bridges and local railroads and attacked their lines of supply and communication. Belorussians kept sabotaging rail lines. Russians never got control of large cities where major roads pass, and couldn’t control the airport enough to fly in supplies. At the point they retreated they had been completely stuck with no progress for more than a week, and it was only a matter of time before they were surrounded.
They chose (mostly) orderly retreat over waiting a few more weeks and getting routed and destroyed.
> If the Russians are so weak and incompetent then why is nearly every European country doubling their military expenditures? And countries that have been neutral through the second world war now rushing into NATO?
Because they are going to besiege many cities and kill many people even if they end up losing a war, just like what happens in Ukraine right now.
We can clearly see that the current generation of tank the Russians have are useless.
We will spend lots of money on very expensive equally redundant tanks.
We can clearly see that the Russians were unable to gain air superiority.
We will spend lots of money on incredibly expensive new fighters and bombers.
We can clearly see the Russian fleet is bottled up.
We will spend lots of money on new ships and submarines.
If we were interested in defence, all the (small) spending would be on anti tank and anti aircraft missile systems, logistics, and training our national guard, firemen, police and other citizens.
We (the west) vastly outnumber the Russians, have more advanced technology, and hugely larger industrial capacity.
This defence spending is obviously not about Russia, and not about defence, it is firstly and mainly about making money and creating jobs to get ourselves out of the current economic disaster, and secondly about preparing for war with our next official adversary, whoever the Americans decide to nominate for that.
I think you underestimate just how low EU military spending was. In Germany there were reports of a complete lack of readiness: in 2018 DW reported that none of Germany's 14 large military transports were flight-worthy, 21,000 officer positions were vacant, fighter aircraft were averaging 4 months of flyability per year (resulting in a pilot training deficit), and only 9 of 44 tanks promised for the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force were operational. And those are the big flashy items. The articles also note shortages of supplies like winter clothes, automatic grenade launchers, night-vision equipment, and body armor.
The German defense budget was 46.5 bln € in 2021 [1]. The problem is not spending, the problem is the utter mismanagement in the defense ministry and military forces. I have talked to someone who did contract work for the ministry and knows their internal processes. He proposed that the first step should be to fire everyone and restaff the ministry from scratch.
True, but presumably EU pays its soldiers EU wages and buys modern technology which has been tested for safety and reliability, whereas Russia sends conscripts to war in austere equipment.
> We can clearly see that the current generation of tank the Russians have are useless.
You deeply underestimate how much worse things could get.
After receiving tens of thousands of ATGMs, Ukraine still only destroyed a fraction of the current russian armor and equipment. Russia has many times over in storage. Sure, it will take a while to make that operational, but we shouldn't be taking any chances and just build overwhelming force to stop Russia, especially when it's so cheap for us, relatively speaking.
There are some estimates that 25% (500 of 2000) of all tanks involved in the invasion were destroyed. That's certainly a fraction but a rather large one.
By "traditional" warfare I meant something similar to the campaigns against Serbia or the second Iraq war.
Basically long bombing campaigns targeting everything from military targets, to TV-stations, to train stations, while the opponent was unable to respond, leaving them broken and demoralized.
> fear that the Russians will be pushed into a more "traditional" warfare with heavy air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow
That's what they're already doing. Except it's not with air power, because theirs is kind of a joke ( using commercial off the shelf phones and GPS to communicate and navigate), but with artillery. And it's not "anything remotely dual use", it's bomb everything, even obviously civilian targets.
Russia isn’t the only player on the board. There’s a whole load of sabre rattling from China which military leaders have been warning about for years. This is some leverage to build a defence strategy against them and other actors too.
Plus Russia could probably do some damage and would be difficult if not impossible to completely take out due to the size of their land mass.
The calculus has changed. Previous defence spending was based on a much less aggressive Russian posture than what they’ve now taken. Since Russia is willing to go war in Europe, which almost no-one really thought possible before, the deterrent must be increased to account for the increased risk.
Two main reasons for European increase in military spending (in no particular order):
1. The latest Russian invasion was a wake-up call. Much bigger than in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and East Ukraine. Especially Germany and France have been attempting to reach a lasting peaceful relationship with Russia through trade and agreements. Any hope anybody in Europe might have had of that has evaporated now.
2. Fear that the US will not be there to defend Europe in the future (Trump threatened to leave NATO - and might be re-elected). One of the (fair) reasons behing Trump's threats were European NATO countried not paying their fair share (2% of GDP in 2014 agreement).
Exactly. European countries are finally realising they can't rely on the US to defend them forever, and Russia has become a much more active threat.
For all my life I've opposed defense spending and supported reduction of defense spending, but not anymore. As long as Putin rules Russia, Russia is a real threat to any neighbouring country. Even if my own country is relatively safe, I think it's important we help other countries to defend themselves against this threat.
I would still strongly prefer friendly relationships with Russia, but Putin has made that impossible. We need to stop buying Russian gas as soon as possible.
> If the Russians are so weak and incompetent then why is nearly every European country doubling their military expenditures?
Even being not very good at war they've been able to do a lot of damage and war crimes.
Plus, some of those countries have had pretty terrible militaries themselves; the head of the German army admittedly recently that their capability as a fighting force is very limited. A lot of Europe was basically coasting militarily because they thought war in Europe was over forever.
'Never let a good crisis go to waste'. European leaders have long known they had to increase military ability, they just couldn't persuade their citizens.
Ukraine doesn't have a navy or air force anymore and a large portion of their mechanized force has been taken out. You wouldn't know it by listening to western media though.
European/NATO countries are increasing their military spending for a reason.
Russia has definitely been losing the propaganda war, that's for sure.
The conventional thinking was that the Russian Steamroller would flatten Ukraine within 3-5 days. Absolutely no one suspected the war would last this long. In that sense it is far from just a "propaganda war".
I don't know why it should surprise anyone. People who make Putin unhappy end up with "accidental" polonium poisoning. Is there any reason to suspect the Russian military hasn't suffered some for that? Or that the Russian military-industrial complex hasn't suffered some due to looting, corruption, and incompetence?
I'm not delusional. Russia has the resources (and human bodies) to waste on this for as long as it takes. If the leadership has the political will they will probably win eventually. It seems unlikely to be worth the cost but Russia would hardly be the first country to pay $100 for a penny in that regard.
As for mechanized force, they've been taking far fewer losses than Russia, due to having so many western portable anti-tank missiles + defender's advantage. And now that they're starting to get more armored vehicles from the West, things are looking up.
Russia expected to win easily and they've been getting hammered instead.
It's kind of a self-sustaining problem. Russia has conscription for men. 99% of the guys I know (me included) hate this very idea and did their best to not serve (there's an entire underground industry dedicated to military service evasion). The remaining 1% did serve in the army, and consider it to be the worst year of their lives. So, as you imagine, most people that do end up in the army are generally the ones that aren't very smart and/or don't have the resources to evade it. Which you can pretty clearly see from their behavior in Kyiv oblast.
It's kind of a negative selection that's been going on for quite some time. Conveniently, Maxim Katz's yesterday's video is about negative selection but higher up in the government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4kmwnZ4l_s
Corruption in the army is one thing. Another one is over-relying on the nuclear weapons. They probably thought "Who cares if that tank's engine is stolen. After all, we have nukes!".
Also, I would argue about legacy. The legacy, as with many things Russian, was mostly made up. The Soviet army did a lot of atrocities during, e.g. looting and rapings in WW2 in Germany (aka the "German spring"), the pointless Afghan war that killed 1mln civilians, the suppression of democracy in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s, the Chechen wars, etc. It has never been as glorious as Soviet propaganda described it. It's always been ugly and brutal.
PS. I highly recommend reading the long threads of Kamil Galeev [1] on Twitter. He did an excellent job explaining why Russia and its army are what they are.
> "Who cares if that tank's engine is stolen. After all, we have nukes!"
But what are the odds those nukes even work? From what I understand, they're complex devices that require expert maintenance. What are the odds they've been properly maintained over the disastrous past 3 decades?
It's not something I'd ever want to bet on, because even if only 10% of their nukes work, that's still plenty to do tons of damage with, but considering the sorry state of their military, I'd be quite surprised if all of their nukes still worked perfectly.
That's a good question. It would be irresponsible to bet on the nukes not working. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if one day it becomes known that Russia's nukes are non-functional due to negligence and corruption.
Historically, Russian nukes tended to fail by disabling fail safes and self-arming. It took joint efforts with the US in the 90s to find(!) and disable the faulty ones.
Historically, Russian units improve markedly after being banged around a bit. They don't go in for realistic training, don't have a good career NCO corps, and don't exercise their equipment much. Currently, Russian conscripts only serve one year, so they don't get enough training to know what they are doing. But after a few battles, the losers have been killed off and the units shake down into some level of competence.
The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII. Their historical level of acceptable losses is high.
I wonder if the current situation looks very different to what the German attack looked like in 1941. AFAIK Russians were then too terribly underequiped, undertrained and taking heavy losses in a rapid retreat.
Except then they were being attacked, had the Russian winter on their side, and had conscription and the heavy industry fully mobilised. Plus eventually lots of American-made kit (which wasn’t necessarily better weaponry but at least was made to plan, had spare parts etc).
It took the Russians a while to transition to the great victory in the “great patriotic war”.
Incidentally, this is why I don’t write them off yet, though I sincerely hope Ukraine clocks in a big win. Russians do have the resilience and stubbornness to push through. Whether that can overcome decades of corruption etc remains to be seen.
But it wasn’t the Russians in WW2, there were everyone Soviet, from Ukrainians to Georgians, and Russians of course, but to give the Russians the mantle of only WW2 winners from Soviet side is wrong I think.
Russians invade other countries because they are not capable to produce good things by themselves. They need someone to build advanced weapons, armor, ships, planes, rockets, goods for export. Good warriors are bad makers, usually.
For example, if you are incapable to build a house, then you need to hire someone to build it for you. If you have no money, but you have an army, then you can just enslave him instead. Russian Empire is the jail of nations.
Hmm, well, not sure, actually weapon-making in USSR was mostly constrained to Russia proper. The more advanced the weapons, the more they were constrained.
Much of the “allies” produced simple bits of kit, but the advanced parts of them, designing etc were generally kept in Russia just in case.
Ukraine is a bit of an exception, I guess because it was seen as more of an “insider”. This is why their weapons industry is actually so comprehensive (anti ship missiles, anti tank weapons etc).
2 of my Ukrainian great-grandfathers died in WW2, many other relatives that I do not know about. Were they Russians?
Soviets did plenty of bad things, I don't get that jab. Many Russians now in Russia hate the Soviet moniker and look at the October Revolution as a catastrophe.
Only for Westerners Soviet == Russian, which puzzles me absolutely.
Westerners are usually referring to the Russian leadership. There's a straight line of corruption from the Soviets to Putin.
Also, we're bad at geography, and "former soviet state" is easy / lazy.
Finally, I know lots of Ukrainians that grew up in Russia and vice versa, and can't really keep all the permutations straight. (As I can't for my colleagues from any continent.)
a bit of nitpicking —
but the Soviet Union never really had predominantly Russian leadership, which would be disproportionate to the Russian part of the Soviet population.
Lenin was from a Russian noble but ethnically diverse family.
Stalin was a Georgian and spoke Russian with an incredibly thick accent to the end of his life.
Khrushchev and Brezhnev were Ukrainians, and so on.
But I get your point, and now it makes more sense to me.
I see in Putin more of that monarchist strain — chauvinism from the times of Imperial Russia, which indeed was so much focused on that "RRR-Russian" identity, much more "blood and soil" ideology. And add to that Late Soviet
state "efficiency".
I think of the “Soviet block” as a Russian colonial empire. Like other such empires it drew ranks from different nationalities, ostensibly was ran for the benefit of all of its members, but really only for the Russians, though in a perverse way.
That way was the realisation (continuation?) of the “Great Russia” project. People may not have civil liberties, may be poor and terrorised, but the outside is terrified too.
Did the Ukrainians, Georgians and Estonians want nuclear standoffs with the US for its own sake? Did they want to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968?
The "great patriotic war" is Russian propaganda - they had to find a term to distance themselves from the fact they started the war together with Hitler and only turned against him when he decided to attack Russians. Otherwise Hitler and Stalin were great pals.
Amen, brother. As someone who belonged, when you put on the chest your AKM, take that red folder and say "Торжественно клянусь" - you swear to protect those people no matter what. And when you turn you weapon on them ... I don't expect russian military men to read HN and understand English :-), but anyway - once you turn your weapon on civilians, you may take those epaulets, stick them up your ass and hope nobody can find you. But they will.
Was the Russian military ever that good, actually? In WW2 Russia definitely played a strong role against Germany, but they took massive losses to do so, they desperately needed US equipment/supplies to even do that, and then when they pushed back across Europe they were war criming all over the place, including mass rape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes#Mass_rapes
Then when you look post WW2, they were mostly just used to brutally crush a few uprisings, never really had to fight a real war until the current one.
I wonder if mass rape in world war two could be verified by DNA analysis of the following generation to see how many newborn were the product of males from occupying forces as opposed to previous generations.
Seeing more of this Revisionism of WW2 since the cooling of US-Russia relations (adding to the long time downplaying of Chinese suffering in WW2 vs European suffering)
1 - While Russia was the biggest component, it was the Soviet army - which included Ukraine (and led by a Georgian). So you're tarring both sides of the current war in your comment.
2 - It was a World War, tragic for all parties involved. You look at each side and they had moments of brilliance and absolute disasters. The Soviet Union (nor the UK) didn't have the luxury to sit back and scale their industry because the Axis forces were literally on their front, not separated by an Atlantic Ocean. Would the SU have won without American supplies? We don't know, but to downplay the player who was involved in the biggest military operations of the war that made D Day look like a side battle (Stalingrad, Kursk, Seelow Heights, Leningrad, Operation Bagration, search any one of those) shows a lack of historical awareness.
Edit - Adding to the above - more Civilians died in the Soviet Union than the total combined military deaths of the other Allied Powers. War is hell and shouldn't be romanticised or seen as a solution.
> So you're tarring both sides of the current war in your comment.
Okay? What does this have to do with what I said? The Russians were obviously in charge of the USSR.
> We don't know, but to downplay the player
You're misreading what I wrote. I'm not talking about the importance of their contribution, but about their general competence. Even with US supplies, the USSR took absurdly huge losses against a smaller population invader, while fighting on their own home turf. That speaks to general ineffectiveness, that they could only win through overwhelming numbers.
The most important purpose of a military is to defend their country's populace. The USSR utterly failed here. You can argue that this is because the USSR was also just less economically developed than Germany, but that doesn't exactly paint the country in a flattering light either.
> The Soviet Union (nor the UK) didn't have the luxury to sit back and scale their industry
Bullshit, they could've done it earlier. Germany went back on peace to split Poland with the USSR, any idiot could see the likelihood of eventual backstabbing. Stalin knew it was coming, he was just wrong on exactly when because he didn't believe the intel he got.
> War is hell and shouldn't be romanticised or seen as a solution.
The fear and reputation of the Russian military/nuclear program/spying apparatus has often done more damage historically than the effectiveness of those programs. For example, because the CIA couldn't find evidence for the nukes and infra for deployment which they thought that Russia possessed (or could possess), they began to think the silos were just very cleverly disguised as mundane structures like farm silos, church architecture (IIRC), etc. Apparently they spent a lot of resources going down that rabbithole before realizing Russia simply wasn't that capable. Or how everyone was potentially a Soviet spy or secret communist; it got to the point that you could ruin a career just by suggesting it. This fear did more damage to the average American than any spies did.
>they desperately needed US equipment/supplies to even do that
US material aid helped a ton but the push to inflate it's importance to the end result of the war seems never ending.
Only less than 15% of lend lease supplies had arrived a year after the last axis attempt at and advance on the eastern front. The vast majority whilst incredibly helpful arrived when the axis was already rapidly retreating.
I agree that they were incredibly brutal and rapey tho. How much of that was revenge/progression of the horrors of the eastern front idk.
I'm inclined to say it was a fragment of the time but there was a ton of rape by them in the Chechnyan and Georgian conflicts as well.
I wasn't talking about importance as much as competence. Russia took massive losses to beat down the Germans on the eastern front. They won, but they ended up losing some 25 million people. Given that they were fighting on their home turf vs a smaller population invader, that doesn't make it sound like they were terribly effective other than drowning the Germans in bodies.
I wouldn't use the Ukraine war as an example of the US army being competent (except for maybe logistics and intel). We're supplying then, but we're not doing the actual fighting.
I know some sunk ships in the attack on Pearl Harbor were brought back up and repaired...but I understand Pearl Harbor is drastically shallower than the Black Sea. Like 60 ft vs 1000 ft.
If they were towing it towards Crimea then it should be in the same kind of waters. Perhaps they towed it towards greater depths for some reason, but I very much doubt that they could move it very far.
Did Russia bluff and blunder into the current situation with no real intention of expanding scope or did /do they really have aspirations for a wider campaign of intended conquest of countries beyond Ukraine?
247 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 266 ms ] thread> the Russian Ministry of Defense, confirmed for the first time that the Moskva had sunk, the warship apparently foundering in poor weather while attempts were being made to tow it back to port.
Although some of their news shows seem to be vowing for revenge against Ukraine while still parroting the Kremlin line about how the cause is being investigated.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/151476606277187585...
Sidenote: Russian state TV is absolutely batshit crazy, and I say that with no exaggeration. Holy mother of Christ.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/151481135717821236...
https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1514600448728002565
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tvc9kq/russian_sta...
At that point, the lies and indoctrination become effortless.
My version: it sunk right away and they lied to save the face.
[0] https://www.oceangrafix.com/chart/zoom?chart=55001
https://www.rt.com/russia/553902-flagship-sank/
Russian flagship sinks – military
The missile cruiser Moskva went down in the Black Sea while being towed to port, the Russian Defense Ministry said
The Russian missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, sank while being towed into port amid stormy sea conditions, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday. According to the Russian military, the warship’s hull had been damaged by an ammunition explosion, itself caused by a fire on board, on Wednesday.
Ukrainian officials claimed their forces had struck the vessel with anti-ship missiles. The Pentagon said it could not confirm the claim. A US drone circled above the cruiser on Thursday, monitoring its progress towards Sevastopol.
It was slightly larger than the Belgrano.
I'm not sure how it could be confirmed that Ukrainian actions cause the ship to sink. Hardly likely that Russia will say so even if it is true.
Maybe someone with expertise in these matters could shed light on the question. Certainly there are more than a few people around the globe who are highly invested in knowing the answer to that one.
The Ukrainians were reportedly flying a Bayraktar TB2 drone nearby at the time (used as a spotter/distraction for their 2 Neptun anti-ship cruise missiles), and might have video footage. Whether they would want to release it is another story.
There could plausibly be intercepted audio of radio conversations among the Russian military.
Aside: The current Ukrainian gov’t response is pretty snarky: “Oleksiy Arestovych, aide to Zelensky administration chief of staff Yermak, likens fire at Russia’s flagship cruiser Moskva to blast at Belgorod fuel depot, says both happen to appear as some bad luck.” https://twitter.com/myroslavapetsa/status/151440038235680358...
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1514401183900831756
One way to dispel doubt is to sink more ships with more missiles.
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/russian-ships-heading-south-russian-1...
Iraq hit the US navy with missiles launched from a business jet. Given what we've seen to date the Ukrainians are at least as resourceful.
Bad time to be on a Russian warship in the Black Sea.
When deployed, a Neptune coastal defence system comprises a USPU-360 truck-based mobile launcher, four missiles, a TZM-360 transport/reload vehicle, a RCP-360 command and control vehicle, and a special cargo vehicle. The system is designed to operate up to 25 kilometres (16 mi) inland of the coastline*
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-360_Neptune
Now, I don't know whether Ukraine has retained air launch capability in the derivative, but that is plausible. I do know that war motivates tremendous initiative, so if not you can bet they're working on it.
As I understand, this is true. Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Stark_incident
What a brilliant guerilla-style strategy! I am surprised that Ukraine has not considered the same... but maybe they do not have anything like the Exocet in their arsenal.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlQ5Hs5OOGU
The scarcity may explain why Ukraine waited for 50 days to hit the cruiser. It was an "all or nothing" moment.
Also, there were reports that Ukrainian navy used 1 Neptun missile to hit a smaller ship, frigate "Essen", with less success.
Who do you expect to confirm it? Ukraine? They did it. Russia? They will never ever admit it. The US? They might not have technical means for that despite lots of flying surveillance assets in that area.
Ukraine got what it wanted from the news. There's no point rubbing it in Russia's face any more, enraging the russians even more.
The same for US.
It's easy to see why they spin it this way if you watch at least one program of Vremya or similar Russian "news" or read Putin's article on Ukraine from last year. They don't consider Ukraine a 'real' country, and Ukrainians as normal people. The supremacism, bigotry and entitlement to Ukraine is mind blowing, and unfortunately quite a number of Russians agree.
So it will always be the West's fault, or an accident but they will never admit to a defeat by Ukrainians as it will challenge their supremacist views. I expect next they will claim that it wasn't a Neptun missile, but maybe a British Harpoon, or why not even a CIA sabotage operation. And they cannot help themselves not to provoke and draw in Western countries that wouldn't care less about Eastern Europe.
This type of thinking is already playing out on Russian TV where the failure of Russia to capture Kiev in three days is explained by Western arms and training even they were already known before the declaration of the "Special Military Operation".
It gives me hope that supremacists, bigots and bullies lose because they underestimate their opponents.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/151476606277187585...
And at the same time overestimate their own capabilities. Both history and life experience teach us that more often than not failure is an outcome of inadequate self-observation. Imagined prowess based on mistaken assumptions is so often the source of defeat even more than losing to a genuinely superior adversary. It's the difference between arrogant blindness and courage under fire, the first is a dishonest prelude to failure, the second affirms reality and probability of success.
Bonus points: 1) parallels with Tsushima, and 2) the fact that this was the "russian warship" from the meme, and that it went precisely where it was told.
In fact Russia as a country now has no shipyards capable of building anything larger than frigates, so this missile cruiser is actually something beyond the technology of Russia to produce right now. All of the Soviet Union's (and Russia's) aircraft carriers were in fact built in Mykolaiv as well for example. Their main class of Aircraft Carrier in the cold war was the "Kiev" (Kyiv) class.
Which is why Russia felt cheated for having an independent Ukraine that's not a Russian puppet state as it meant the loss of highly important defense supply chains.
It wasn't a loss until Russia occupied Crimea and the Donbas, before that there was extensive collaboration, even after the fall of Yanukovich. Instead of having the vital supply chains in a non-puppet but relatively friendly neighbor, they cut their own noses off to spite Ukraine and lost access to stuff like marine engines they simply can't replace.
Accidental fire on board is a freak accident that’s not replicatable. Missile attack means that someone has either competely lied about their capabilities or has corrupted and sold the self defense systems. Or both.
The latter means Russian ships in general are now a way easier targets and hence smaller threats. Hence Russia has every incentive to hide this.
Source please?
However, I feel that CIWS is mostly defensive security theatre. How often are do they actually work in the real world? The number of attacks on vessels carrying CIWS are so small. As a result, CIWS hardly get any real world practice. Events would be studied by military and manuf., then software updates made. As a counterpoint: Think how many cruise missiles have been fired in the last 50 years -- lots(!). There are plenty of case studies for military and manuf. to improve software. (I assume this is also how anti-missile systems are improved, like the US Patriot system.)
FYI about this ship (Moskva):
Why not? We are allowed to ask for the sources to claims that are not obvious or easily verifiable, like the ones regarding weapons systems of a secretive country.
And all of them naturally boast that they can defend against well, everything. Only when something is actually tested in the field we can see how well it works.
Hence Russians have an incentive to deny that it was due to weakness of their CIWS. Or, perhaps more probably, an incentive to say to Putin that they didn't corrupt all the maintenance money and it was just an accident.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Mason_(DDG-87)#Attacks_off...
Mokva air defence radar only looks one way.
They made it look away from the coast using a drone, and then launched missiles when it turned away from the coast — this is how I imagine it happened.
But I have a hard time picturing the Moskva having trouble destroying a drone with the performance of a WWI-era plane.
It also had two radars, MR-710 and MR-800, but I'm unable to find if they have differences in terms of target tracking and acquisition.
Given the Russian army's current level of performance and the Russian navy's...entire history, I don't have any trouble believing the Moskva was beguiled by a drone.
They have a small RCS, but they're slow as a dog, and signals at sea are significantly easier to interpret given that there's infinitely less spurious reflection and radio sources. Maybe the bad weather played a bigger role in that than I've seen accounted for. But even with detection at close range, any modern heat-seeking SAM should have absolutely no problem taking it down before it drops anything funny on target.
Additionally even if drones were detected the Moskva may not have been equipped with heat seeking munitions. Even if they had them, a drone at stand-off distance can easily be out of range of their targeting. The drones also only need to occupy the ship's attention long enough to distract it from the incoming anti-ship missiles. Even if the drones are shot down it's a small price to pay to disable or sink the Russia's biggest naval asset in the Black Sea.
Finding things even in calm seas is hard. Aiming at those things is harder. Hitting those things with a fast moving thing is harder still. Poor equipment increases those difficulties as does poor crew capability. All of those combined makes for single use submarines.
That seems like a pretty big flaw, given how easy it could be to, y'know, attack from more than one direction at a time.
I would think that it would be more important to Ukraine from a morale standpoint if the missile attack was the cause. To take out the flagship of the Russian fleet with a weapon of Ukrainian design that hadn't previously been proven in battle... that's big. I would expect morale to be a key concern for them given the punishment they're enduring to get these victories.
Maybe because ... it actually is.
This isn't the cause by the actions of a single piece of shit (Putin) but the consequences of unchecked sistemic corruption that spans for decades across the entire government apparatus.
I laughed out loud when I saw pictures of the ERA plates on Russian tanks were actually filled with cardboard because what should have been the Russian army modernization, is now parked in the biggest most luxurious yachts in the world and in the most desirable real estate in Europe and North America.
So, as a European who's country had been under forced Russian occupation, and the puppet communist regime there caused scars that will still last for decades, I'm chuck full of joy to see Russia's army being crippled from inside by it's own corrupt system and the greed of it's own leaders. 10/10
I already have my apartment at 20C and can probably tolerate a bit lower if it means starving the Russian army and saving Ukrainian lives.
Still, I expected the Russian government propaganda to spin this news into something like "Heroic Moskva cruiser managed to successfully destroy two enemy Neptune missiles with its hull, causing it to be promoted to the rank of submarine ".
Centuries, really. The inveterate kleptocracy that is Russia goes back further than the Soviets. The only real crime that exists for the Russian elite is stealing more than allowed. That was true for the Boyars, the Nomenklatura and it remains true for the oligarchy.
Corruption in modern Russia is unique to Putin's regime - he used it (and still uses) as a tool to concentrate power - he puts in position of power only corrupt officials as a mean to get full loyalty - officials not loyal enough can be easily blackmailed, secret services have enough "kompromat" to put any government official into jail but are waiting for a signal from above. Corruption is the foundation for what in Russia called the "vertical of power", which essentially means that a person in a power structure have almost unlimited (limited only by Putin, but not by the law) power over people below.
Looks like this tool has spun out of control.
It was actually fatal. I've studied the corruption that emerged under the Soviets; it was systemic and, in fact, necessary to mitigate the crippling adversities created by Soviet ideology. It is the primary reason the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago.
When selecting who to delegate power to, all soviet leaders selected people who are loyal to them and suitable for the job. Loyalty was more important than competence so government was full of incompetent people, but competence was not a disqualifying factor so some of them was able to do the job.
In Putin's power structure people who not steal and cannot be easily blackmailed are not promoted high enough. Being not corrupt _is_ a disqualifying factor. Putin at least in the beginning of his career maintained visibility of a country with the rule of law, so instead jailing opponents on a whim he jailed them for breaking the law, but the law was enforced selectively only for ones who are not fully loyal.
As a result in modern Russia personal enrichment is a much bigger problem that it was in Soviet Union. Soviet nomenklatura [1] was rich compare to poor population but their quality of life was not much better than for upper-middle class in the US. The same nor the case for modern Russia.
Failure of soviet economy as I know was not result of corruption - much more resources were wasted than stolen. Unfortunately I cannot provide any sources here - all I read was in Russian and I cannot find translations to English.
I've seen this inefficiency myself in form of many thousands tons of trees which were cut so harvesting organization would meet KPI for amount of harvested wood but left to rot in the forest because an organization which should transport the wood had not enough capacity to do this (but likely transported all volume on paper, which you may say is corruption, but resources were wasted, not stolen).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura
My country was behind an iron curtain and one of the motto's of that time was: "If one doesn't embelish from the state it means one's embelishing from their family". Even with democracy this mentality won't fully go away for generations. Russia continued on that trajectory to a worse state.
If the US starts WWIII, nobody will be left alive in Russia to care. If Russia starts WWIII, likewise, and it's better if the warheads don't work anyway. Meanwhile, that dacha on the Black Sea coast isn't going to pay for itself, nor is the boat that comes with it.
"Are you cold now?"
"Yes sir!"
"Now get dressed!", "Are you still cold?"
"No sir!"
It took me years to get used to the heat indoors when I moved to Scandinavia.
What worries me is that this is happening in the U.S. as well.
In the west we have free press looking into it and exposing the theft, plus, the theft in the west has very complex schemes to make it look legit on the surface and to make sure nothing sticks to our Teflon politicians, but in Russia they don't need to worry about any red tape BS, they can just shove their hands in the public purse and take as much as they want and go directly to the Lamborghini dealership or the casino without any accountability, and if any reporter looks too deeply into their theft, they get death threats or even death through very suspicious circumstances.
It's orders if magnitude worse.
Contracts are definitely awarded to companies based on their political connections, and not necessarily merits. Look at the whole Halliburton/Cheney shitshow in Iraq for a recent example.
We're talking $40 billion worth of (cost-plus!!!) contracts awarded to a company that was widely viewed as incompetent by the soldiers on the ground, followed by the vice-president getting a position on the board of said company when he retired. This is after he got a $30 million golden parachute after leaving them in 2001.
It's just that the US manages to prolong this much longer than others.
I mean you can definitely argue for inefficiency in the MIC, but you don't see people literally just stealing millions from the allocated budget and shifting it to their bank accounts or megayachts.
I am not saying it’s an identical situation, which seems to be the assumption of some. However, the oligarchical nature of the U.S. is not slowing down.
But the Soviet Union fell thirty years ago, an entire generation ago. The Soviet Union had 280 million people, more than the US had at the time. Big. Scary. But Russia today has only 140 million people. Over half the population just up and left when given the chance. They said "thanks, but no thanks" to Moscow.
Sure, Russia still has a big military budget, but their GDP isn't that great. Their GDP is much smaller than Italy's, alone. Smaller than France's, alone. Smaller than Germany's, alone. Hell, even the five Nordic countries have a higher combined GDP than Russia has. Growing up in the Nordics during the cold war meant having to think about Russia as an enormous big bad who could crush us completely if they wanted to. But now, our combined economies are larger.
Russia is corrupt, and has been corrupt for an entire generation. And it's been corrupt on a scale that is unprecedented compared to itself in the past, and compared to the rest of Europe. We complain about the military-industrial complex and how much waste there is, but military contractors in the west actually deliver stuff, whereas all the corrupted half-assery of the Russian military is being exposed now.
The combined defence budget of the EU is about 4 times larger than Russia's. Since the end of the cold war, the EU has been prosperous, peaceful, and happy. We've invested in our defence and grown stronger over the last thirty years, while Russia has declined.
We in the EU have over three times the population, over four times the military budget, and ten times the GDP of Russia. We have nukes and tanks and aircraft carriers and submarines and stealth fighters of our own. And yet so many still view Russia as a threat, as a bigger and stronger foe.
This debacle sure has been eye-opening to me, and I hope it's been that way for everyone else stuck in the cold-war mentality.
Simple. The EU is not military united but it's pretty much a "every man for himself" kind of thing outside of NATO or a direct attack, but the EU or NATO is currently not under attack so some people see Ukraine as "more of you problem than a me problem"… so other than sending some aid to Ukraine most people don't want to go to war with Russia or suffer crippling energy shortages for Ukraine.
EU leaders are also not immune from kleptocratic greed and external and internal corruption.
Austria is more than happy to keep pumping money into Russia in exchange for cheap gas, as that gas runs 80% of their industry, and several elite Austrian politicians were given top jobs on boards of Russian oil and gas companies to lobby for them and against nuclear or other alternatives, or have straight up offered their support to Russian oligarchs in under-the-table business deals ( the infamous "Ibiza scandal").
Good luck replacing that gas on a whim after several decades of Russian lobbying that lead to the current status quo.
Deliver stuff nobody needs? LOL, the American oligarchs aren't much better. Just because they use a different word (lobbying instead of bribing) doesn't make it any less of a corrupt system.
https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/77-billion-raptor-22-fighter-...
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/air-force-admits-f-35-...
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/18/congress-agai...
https://youtu.be/aXQ2lO3ieBA
At least in the US, via lobbying, the bribes are transparent and you can follow the money and see who's pulling the strings.
This is much better than everything being done under the table and assuming there is no corruption because we don't have lobbying, like the classical misconception we have in Europe.
How do you think Trump and company got in?
I assume Putin has already gulaged some scapegoats that his cronies found responsible for this current mess.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-fsbs-beseda-in-prison...
If the Russians are so weak and incompetent then why is nearly every European country doubling their military expenditures? And countries that have been neutral through the second world war now rushing into NATO?
I fear that the Russians will be pushed into a more "traditional" warfare with heavy air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow.
2) Nukes.
3) Even though the Russian military appears increasingly incompetent, they are still capable of creating immense damage and destruction.
We badly need new trucks. I have a driver (I'm lieutenant), but have no truck, because my truck was used in Chornobyl, so it's not operable now because of 30 years of out of service at conservation. If I have a truck, I can swap my cabin from Chornobyl truck to new truck and create a working communication station, but I cannot find a cheap truck to buy.
If you have a barely working truck, please, sent it to Ukraine, Rivne, Ukrainian Army, 55 OPZ, 1 battalion.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/03/why-second-han...
https://pekelnitachky.com/en
Plus you have to plan for the adversary being better than what you have evidence for, that's just prudent.
The mistake is that other countries are being bullied by Russia. NATO untill further escalation works.
2. NATO military was not really tested in full scale combat and can perform worse than expected too.
NATO has had plenty of logistical failures but it doesn't narrow it's planning to total top-down so those failures are dealt with and worked around by elements in the middle and on the field.
Also, Europe was depending on the idea that if you integrate Russian economy with the Western economy there wouldn't be reason to wage wars, just the way EU integrated historic enemies into completely peaceful union therefore there's no need to maintain large armies. Unfortunately, the method that works for EU countries doesn't work for Russia(too corrupt? too autocratic? too eastern mentality? who knows) and as a result European countries now increase their budgets for their defence.
I think it's tragic. Would have been much better if Russians sent their gas as Europe gradually transitions into renewables and Europe sent their produce to Russians and improve their lives as they diversify their economy as the fossil energy is phased out. It should have worked, EU definitely tried make it work.
In general the method works, there were(are) deep economic ties growing between germany and russia for example to mutual benefit. And those sectors are devastated because of the war and were really not in favour of it.
But Russia is a bit bigger than slovakia for example, so some economic ties were apparently not enough.
Also, most of the russia population received an decrease in living standard after the soviet union fell, so democracy was off with a bad start. When your individual life is shit, it is a comfort knowing you are at least part of something great. The RUS empire. Only, that in reality it is just a brutal, rusty moloch, which more people are hopefully seeing now. And yes, it is tragic. We now have war and even if there will be peace eventually, a new iron curtain with mines will once again divide europe.
So once again we are in a "war of ideas". I hope we do not face a "new iron curtain" as you say, that would indeed be a shame.
I held so many hopes for the Russian people but foolishly thought they had escaped the prisons of thought that might bind them. So many outstanding people, some of the best writers, mathematicians, and scientists, generations of civilization and a history worth mining for gems.
I now see more clearly that the Russians (and other peoples in that region of the Earth) are neither Western nor Eastern in thought but have their own very different perceptions of the world. And unfortunately many of them seem to suffer an undeserved diminished sense of self-worth and a desire for recognition (some call it "thymos") that is perceived as not forthcoming from foreigners, whether truly present or not.
I have always believed that any Russian or "Eurasian" (if I may use that term to denote the broader groups of peoples in the region) person was as worthy or better, good or bad, strong or weak, kind, and good ... as any person whatsoever. But I fear b/c of the West's indifference and yes, the West's negligence of these peoples after the breakup of the Soviet Union, we have, as a group, not sufficiently shown the respect that is due them. We needed a "Marshall Plan" for the fall of the Soviet Union, if only to offer it.
I mean, who want to test how harmful a slingshot is if they can't retaliate?
Russia has an artillery based army and Ukraine doesn't have the long range weapons to destroy it, so Russia can just destroy city after city from a safe distance.
Much weaker, but not harmless indeed.
Plus, the US already send 25% of its Javelin and Stinger missiles to Ukraine and it will take many years to replenish those stocks.
Can all countries in the vicinity of Ukraine receive such numbers of missiles and support?
No, hence we need to ramp up military spending and production in case Russia gets even wilder ideas.
Europe hasn't had an army to speak of for decades (and for a good reason). So "doubling military expenditures" for most of Europe is "going from nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
> air campaigns against anything remotely "dual-use" and the massive civil casualties that would follow.
They don't have to be "pushed". They have been basically doing that since the war started.
Where do you get these claims? Most European countries are part of NATO which demands a modernized standing army as part of its membership requirements.
While it's true that most countries don't spend the ridiculous amount of their wealth on arms as USA does, the armies of European countries are far from not existing.
I couldn't be bothered to look beyond Wikipedia, so going by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
1. Most countries spend significatly less than is required by NATO. Nato requires 2% of GDP to be spent on defense. In the EU, only 7 countries are at that threshold, or above it, and of those Finland is not in NATO.
2. France has the largest active military personnel at 200k, and of those, 17k are "prepared for deployed and sustained operations".
At this point all of EU couldn't get an army to respond to Russia's current force engaged in Ukraine.
This is not strictly true and there’s no such legal requirement, only a political one. Case in point id Iceland, which is a NATO member but has no armed forces to speak of.
That is sheer numbers. The EU has 1 million active military personnel on paper. Of that, less than 30k are "land troops prepared for deployed and sustained operations" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
If only I was discussing that, right?
> And Ukraine have been conducting mobilization since the war started
Yes, but the original question was, "Why is Europe increasing defense spending". The sum total of Europe's deployed forces is smaller than Ukraine's was before this war.
Russia's defence budget is ~50 billion dollars per year.
The combined defence budgets of all of Europe is ~200 billion dollars per year, which is four times as large as Russia's. And that's from before the Ukraine invasion. The bulk of that defence budget belongs to NATO members who already have decades of experience in working together and having a shared command structure. We outspend Russia four to one, and if all European NATO members bump their defence budgets to the 2% requirement, we're gonna outspend Russia seven to one.
Going from four times the defence budget or Russia to seven times the defence budget of Russia is nowhere near going from "nearly zero to slightly more than zero".
> Active personnel 1,014,000
Oh no, a million demotivated peasants with rusty Soviet-era weapons! Whatever shall we do? Best we roll over and let Russia invade and take whatever they want!
You're also stuck in the cold war mentality that Russia is still as big and strong as the Soviet Union was, and it's just not true anymore. Europe has three times the population, four times the defence budget, and ten times the GDP of Russia. Russia has had three decades of unparalleled corruption and decay, and we're supposed to feel threatened?!?
No. Stop. Re-evaluate. Russia is no longer an existential threat to Europe.
> Russia is no longer an existential threat to Europe.
If only I ever said anywhere whether I thought Russia was an existential threat to Europe. Stop. Re-evaluate. There's a specific point I was replying to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Po...
That's some goal post moving. You were explicitly talking about military expenditures, and your claim that Europe's military expenditures doubling is insignificant is completely laughable given that the current level is already 4x Russia's.
The only reason you pivoted to active troops, pretending we were talking about that all along, is because that's the only number that's bigger on the Russian side of the equation.
Europe and the countries bordering Russia have a lot of personnel. Sweden even reactivated military duty.
There's a big benefit in decentralized warfare that the NATO has been doing that Russia can't emulate.
Countries bordering Russia have very few actively deployed forces. Sweden has 750 ground troops "ready for deployment and sustained operations". Seven hundred and fifty. Finland has ~1750.
> benefit in decentralized warfare that the NATO has been doing that Russia can't emulate
Those decentralized troops have to get to the conflict zones first.
Wartime strength is 280 k.
Reserves train yearly.
That's a lot more than 1750...
Actie personel is 24 k, reserve = 31.8 k and Paramilitary = 22 k. - https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-de...
That's way more than 750 people too...
Where did you even get those numbers?
Also the larges part of any military are non combat support personnel. Weather its people building things or transporting them or fixing them. Also manning various stations. Providing security for military installation. Military police. Military intelligence. etc.
So out of 1m people russia only has around 250k combat troops. 190k of which are currently engaged in Ukraine.
And one of the reasons we see all this logistical problems is that Russia has too much combat troops (or too little support) for its support force. In other militaries its usually from 6 to 9 support people for every combat role.
Also remember SU was over 300M (and that without Warsaw pact nations). Russia is less than 150m.
So no Russia does not have endless supply of troops, unless they start mobilization.
Moreover, lots of proper military research projects have been done. It's the actual production where they run into the corruption bottleneck: that could be solved and the giant might awaken.
Russia was/is spending something like 17% on military. Obviously they planned to use it at some point, I can't believe we were this dumb not to see it.
Russia can’t make special stuff if it can’t make boring stuff.
They can try import substitution from China but it would be difficult to move goods as the Trans-Siberian Railway is already at capacity trying to replace other goods, and even China may not be able to provide suitable replacements for parts manufactured in Europe.
I remember reading somewhere, maybe the Guardian, that:
- just 9% of the total russian forces are now deployed against Ukraine
- they thought it will be an easy victory so they sent the lowest grade troops they had.
Contrary to the lowest grade, it seems that many elite forces were used : https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/destination-disaster-r... unfortunately they were deployed in an amateur way using a reckless plan. If the reinforcement strategy had come off then everyone would say that it was utterly brilliant, but gambles like this happen in war all the time. We like to venerate the ones that work and to talk about brilliant generals and the glamour of battle. In reality, as in this case they mostly fail and the troops get bogged down and killed.
The Russians have done a surprising and smart thing, which shows that someone in Moscow has the light on still. They've pulled out of the north and completely changed strategy - this shows a strategic flexibility that's really quite impressive, and unusual for a totalitarian regime. The problem that they have now is that the situation in the south is much more difficult than it would have been if they had gone for it at the outset. They don't have much of a reserve because Russia is so vast and the Russians have serious commitments at the border with China and North Korea and so on.
They were unable to effectively resupply troops in the North, who were out of food, low on fuel, and lacking supply trucks. Ukranians blew up bridges and local railroads and attacked their lines of supply and communication. Belorussians kept sabotaging rail lines. Russians never got control of large cities where major roads pass, and couldn’t control the airport enough to fly in supplies. At the point they retreated they had been completely stuck with no progress for more than a week, and it was only a matter of time before they were surrounded.
They chose (mostly) orderly retreat over waiting a few more weeks and getting routed and destroyed.
Because they are going to besiege many cities and kill many people even if they end up losing a war, just like what happens in Ukraine right now.
If we were interested in defence, all the (small) spending would be on anti tank and anti aircraft missile systems, logistics, and training our national guard, firemen, police and other citizens. We (the west) vastly outnumber the Russians, have more advanced technology, and hugely larger industrial capacity.
This defence spending is obviously not about Russia, and not about defence, it is firstly and mainly about making money and creating jobs to get ourselves out of the current economic disaster, and secondly about preparing for war with our next official adversary, whoever the Americans decide to nominate for that.
[1] https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Monatsberichte/2022/0... (Ctrl-F "Ausgaben des Bundes nach Aufgabenbereichen", row title "Verteidigung")
Russia's was 6% of GDP , but EU easily outspended it with <2%
You deeply underestimate how much worse things could get.
After receiving tens of thousands of ATGMs, Ukraine still only destroyed a fraction of the current russian armor and equipment. Russia has many times over in storage. Sure, it will take a while to make that operational, but we shouldn't be taking any chances and just build overwhelming force to stop Russia, especially when it's so cheap for us, relatively speaking.
Basically long bombing campaigns targeting everything from military targets, to TV-stations, to train stations, while the opponent was unable to respond, leaving them broken and demoralized.
That's what they're already doing. Except it's not with air power, because theirs is kind of a joke ( using commercial off the shelf phones and GPS to communicate and navigate), but with artillery. And it's not "anything remotely dual use", it's bomb everything, even obviously civilian targets.
Plus Russia could probably do some damage and would be difficult if not impossible to completely take out due to the size of their land mass.
1. The latest Russian invasion was a wake-up call. Much bigger than in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and East Ukraine. Especially Germany and France have been attempting to reach a lasting peaceful relationship with Russia through trade and agreements. Any hope anybody in Europe might have had of that has evaporated now.
2. Fear that the US will not be there to defend Europe in the future (Trump threatened to leave NATO - and might be re-elected). One of the (fair) reasons behing Trump's threats were European NATO countried not paying their fair share (2% of GDP in 2014 agreement).
For all my life I've opposed defense spending and supported reduction of defense spending, but not anymore. As long as Putin rules Russia, Russia is a real threat to any neighbouring country. Even if my own country is relatively safe, I think it's important we help other countries to defend themselves against this threat.
I would still strongly prefer friendly relationships with Russia, but Putin has made that impossible. We need to stop buying Russian gas as soon as possible.
And an ill-maintained tank from the Soviet/ww2 era is still a tank.
Even being not very good at war they've been able to do a lot of damage and war crimes.
Plus, some of those countries have had pretty terrible militaries themselves; the head of the German army admittedly recently that their capability as a fighting force is very limited. A lot of Europe was basically coasting militarily because they thought war in Europe was over forever.
Russia has definitely been losing the propaganda war, that's for sure.
I don't know why it should surprise anyone. People who make Putin unhappy end up with "accidental" polonium poisoning. Is there any reason to suspect the Russian military hasn't suffered some for that? Or that the Russian military-industrial complex hasn't suffered some due to looting, corruption, and incompetence?
I'm not delusional. Russia has the resources (and human bodies) to waste on this for as long as it takes. If the leadership has the political will they will probably win eventually. It seems unlikely to be worth the cost but Russia would hardly be the first country to pay $100 for a penny in that regard.
Surprisingly, I’ve found AlJazeera to be quite professional, if slightly biased for up-to-date news.
Reports from rusi.org are interesting, but not free and some do have a whiff of opinion/cheering, which is rather suspect.
Books by Mark Galeotti offer insight into the various Soviet and Russian conflicts and into their military forces.
It is from 2015, but describes the process from the collapse of the Soviet Union and how Russia turned into effectively a fascist dictatorship.
https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/garry-kasparov/win...
As for mechanized force, they've been taking far fewer losses than Russia, due to having so many western portable anti-tank missiles + defender's advantage. And now that they're starting to get more armored vehicles from the West, things are looking up.
Russia expected to win easily and they've been getting hammered instead.
But keep believing in that, it will make our job easier.
It's kind of a negative selection that's been going on for quite some time. Conveniently, Maxim Katz's yesterday's video is about negative selection but higher up in the government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4kmwnZ4l_s
Also, I would argue about legacy. The legacy, as with many things Russian, was mostly made up. The Soviet army did a lot of atrocities during, e.g. looting and rapings in WW2 in Germany (aka the "German spring"), the pointless Afghan war that killed 1mln civilians, the suppression of democracy in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s, the Chechen wars, etc. It has never been as glorious as Soviet propaganda described it. It's always been ugly and brutal.
PS. I highly recommend reading the long threads of Kamil Galeev [1] on Twitter. He did an excellent job explaining why Russia and its army are what they are.
[1] https://twitter.com/kamilkazani
But what are the odds those nukes even work? From what I understand, they're complex devices that require expert maintenance. What are the odds they've been properly maintained over the disastrous past 3 decades?
It's not something I'd ever want to bet on, because even if only 10% of their nukes work, that's still plenty to do tons of damage with, but considering the sorry state of their military, I'd be quite surprised if all of their nukes still worked perfectly.
I'm surprised none have gone off, frankly.
I've been thinking about this possibility for a while:
* Putin fires tactical atomic weapon at some empty plot of Ukrainian land, and announces it as a "demonstration" of Russian might.
* The weapon is a dud.
I'm not sure whether this outcome might not be worse in the long run, in terms of geopolitical stability, than if the weapon performs as expected!
The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII. Their historical level of acceptable losses is high.
(Unfortunately, Google is no longer very good at finding historical items like that.)
Except then they were being attacked, had the Russian winter on their side, and had conscription and the heavy industry fully mobilised. Plus eventually lots of American-made kit (which wasn’t necessarily better weaponry but at least was made to plan, had spare parts etc).
It took the Russians a while to transition to the great victory in the “great patriotic war”.
Incidentally, this is why I don’t write them off yet, though I sincerely hope Ukraine clocks in a big win. Russians do have the resilience and stubbornness to push through. Whether that can overcome decades of corruption etc remains to be seen.
For example, if you are incapable to build a house, then you need to hire someone to build it for you. If you have no money, but you have an army, then you can just enslave him instead. Russian Empire is the jail of nations.
Much of the “allies” produced simple bits of kit, but the advanced parts of them, designing etc were generally kept in Russia just in case.
Ukraine is a bit of an exception, I guess because it was seen as more of an “insider”. This is why their weapons industry is actually so comprehensive (anti ship missiles, anti tank weapons etc).
Only for Westerners Soviet == Russian, which puzzles me absolutely.
Also, we're bad at geography, and "former soviet state" is easy / lazy.
Finally, I know lots of Ukrainians that grew up in Russia and vice versa, and can't really keep all the permutations straight. (As I can't for my colleagues from any continent.)
But I get your point, and now it makes more sense to me.
I see in Putin more of that monarchist strain — chauvinism from the times of Imperial Russia, which indeed was so much focused on that "RRR-Russian" identity, much more "blood and soil" ideology. And add to that Late Soviet state "efficiency".
That way was the realisation (continuation?) of the “Great Russia” project. People may not have civil liberties, may be poor and terrorised, but the outside is terrified too.
Did the Ukrainians, Georgians and Estonians want nuclear standoffs with the US for its own sake? Did they want to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968?
Then when you look post WW2, they were mostly just used to brutally crush a few uprisings, never really had to fight a real war until the current one.
1 - While Russia was the biggest component, it was the Soviet army - which included Ukraine (and led by a Georgian). So you're tarring both sides of the current war in your comment.
2 - It was a World War, tragic for all parties involved. You look at each side and they had moments of brilliance and absolute disasters. The Soviet Union (nor the UK) didn't have the luxury to sit back and scale their industry because the Axis forces were literally on their front, not separated by an Atlantic Ocean. Would the SU have won without American supplies? We don't know, but to downplay the player who was involved in the biggest military operations of the war that made D Day look like a side battle (Stalingrad, Kursk, Seelow Heights, Leningrad, Operation Bagration, search any one of those) shows a lack of historical awareness.
Edit - Adding to the above - more Civilians died in the Soviet Union than the total combined military deaths of the other Allied Powers. War is hell and shouldn't be romanticised or seen as a solution.
You mean stalin? That's who you want us to sympathize with?
Okay? What does this have to do with what I said? The Russians were obviously in charge of the USSR.
> We don't know, but to downplay the player
You're misreading what I wrote. I'm not talking about the importance of their contribution, but about their general competence. Even with US supplies, the USSR took absurdly huge losses against a smaller population invader, while fighting on their own home turf. That speaks to general ineffectiveness, that they could only win through overwhelming numbers.
The most important purpose of a military is to defend their country's populace. The USSR utterly failed here. You can argue that this is because the USSR was also just less economically developed than Germany, but that doesn't exactly paint the country in a flattering light either.
> The Soviet Union (nor the UK) didn't have the luxury to sit back and scale their industry
Bullshit, they could've done it earlier. Germany went back on peace to split Poland with the USSR, any idiot could see the likelihood of eventual backstabbing. Stalin knew it was coming, he was just wrong on exactly when because he didn't believe the intel he got.
> War is hell and shouldn't be romanticised or seen as a solution.
Obviously.
US material aid helped a ton but the push to inflate it's importance to the end result of the war seems never ending.
Only less than 15% of lend lease supplies had arrived a year after the last axis attempt at and advance on the eastern front. The vast majority whilst incredibly helpful arrived when the axis was already rapidly retreating.
I agree that they were incredibly brutal and rapey tho. How much of that was revenge/progression of the horrors of the eastern front idk. I'm inclined to say it was a fragment of the time but there was a ton of rape by them in the Chechnyan and Georgian conflicts as well.
Would this be the only publically known cache of effectively abandoned nuclear weapons in the world?