acrashb

In lighter news, Microsoft has announced a new version of Windows for the Russian market:


Seriously, this thread is well inside my OODA loop.  By the time I have absorbed and considered, someone has already either a) said what I had in mind or b) answered the question in my head.

 

In lighter news, Microsoft has announced a new version of Windows for the Russian market:


Seriously, this thread is well inside my OODA loop.  By the time I have absorbed and considered, someone has already either a) said what I had in mind or b) answered the question in my head.

 

In lighter news, Microsoft has announced a new version of Windows for the Russian market:


Seriously, this thread is well inside my OODA loop.  By the time I have absorbed and considered, someone has already either a) said what I had in mind or b) answered the question in my head.

 

Two things stand out about this story. The GREAT importance of anti tank mines in this war. And the fact the the AFU held their positions even when their anti tank wasn't working brilliantly and convinced the Russians to go away. That takes real soldiers.
People arguing for going doubling the price of tanks AGAIN with with anti drone lasers and such need an answer for mines. Because unless I missed something the latest M-1s get mission killed just as fast as a T-62 when they run over one, although their crew survival is much better. We won't give them time to lay them is not a very good answer.

I keep wondering what happens when someone invents a minefield with legs, or flies...or both.  Dumb ones in the ground are bad enough, what happens when they become sentient?

And those barrels should just pile up on Putin's porch. The free world will adapt just fine without his source of income. If the free world is so addicted to Putin's drug, then shame on us looking the other way and banning technology like fracking. There is plenty of energy in the ground and where money can be made innovation follows.    

I did!  Are we at the point where we are arguing past each other?  Kind of feels like it.  
Retaking pre-2014 lines is not going to be quick, unless Russia collapses.  In fact I am pretty sure there are a lot of people in this regions who won’t like it so an insurgency in the population is likely.  A long drawn out war for that is what I am talking about.
A year?  Of course the west is going to continue the support for a year.  If the UA can walk the RA back to the border in that time, hey great.
Nuclear war.
That.  We are not going likely going to stay united in the west on the Crimea in the face of that.  If the US responds to a battlefield nuclear weapon by wiping out the Black Sea Fleet we are in an 80s movie.  And in this hypothetical we are doing this for Crimea?  Sorry, I do not see it.
Look, I honestly hope I am wrong.  Again, I am not advocating any of this and clearly touched a nerve; however, I am not about living in an echo chamber either.  This is my assessment.  Disagree, post your own assessment, or go to another forum that tells you what you want to hear.
Find me a war where total cost-less victory happens.  WW2, nope cost a mint to rebuild Europe and Japan, and we got the Cold War as a consolation prize.  Pick anyone, they all end with all sides coming to terms with a reality that does not match the one they went in wanting.  No one ever gets 100 percent perfect endings, in order to do that your are by definition not at war.
Last time. Russia must come to terms with how it is going to lose this war, and Ukraine with how it will win it.  Neither of those end states will be a perfect vision of what either side wanted.
 

No the Russians have definitely not won - hell they will be lucky to still have a country by the time this is over.  I am saying that there is a likely limit to western support for this war and it lies somewhere in the Donbas and at the border to the Crimea.  Be it because of nuclear escalation or fatigue.  
Sorry, but I am not invested in telling people what they want to hear - there are enough mouthpieces out there doing that - but how I see things.  This is how I see things.  You can disagree, I am not saying that I am absolutely correct and this is a unavoidable reality.  I am saying that under the current conditions it is likely to happen.
I am not advocating for this btw, my personal feelings are not part of this.  This is how I expect things to go down on the current trajectory.
Again, if things change, like a sudden collapse of the Russian power structure, then this is not the expected future anymore.  However, on the train we are on...etc...etc.    

So where on this thread or anywhere else for that matter will you find an analysis/assessment by me, or anyone else here for that matter that mirrors this?  In fact we were all going the other way while mainstream analysis was saying above.
One year?!  Ok, I think we are done here - you can push back but you are crossing some lines here.  We will be paying off this war for at least a decade, likely longer. The realignment of energy in Europe alone is going to take that long, let alone the reconstruction bill for Ukraine.  The investment in NATO will likely go into the trillions in that time.
You wanna push back with facts, sure let's hear em, but this is more a temper tantrum that the world is harsh and things are likely not going to go all the way you want.  Or you could simply disagree with me and we shall see, but it appears that ship has sailed.  So stamp your feet, hold your breath, it is not going to change likely endgame reality.
Or I could lie to you and tell you that the west will stand behind Ukraine all the way to the 2013 border, even if it takes 10 years and a nuclear war...there, feel better?

Cast The Capt out as insufficiently pure!
 
The revolution always eats its children.

My sense of all this is it seems the start of 'end game'.   The great russian bear is cornered.   But an animal is most dangerous when it is cornered.  There will be much roaring and bellowing and hissing and one can get very severely savaged if one makes a incorrect move or action to confront the beast.   But the bottom line is this.  The bear knows it is cornered and it will do anything to escape its fate, which is why this is the most dangerous moment in the hunt.   The hunters must be thoughtful, determined, resolved and patient to close with the beast and finish it off.   That is where I think we are on the cusp of.  The final fury before the bear is laid low.   There is deadly danger for everyone involved in this figurative dance of death.
My analogy and sense of where I think we are right now.

The Captain is making the cost benefit analysis that you can be sure is also being made not just in London, Paris and New York but also in Kyiv. Should the war continue to go in Ukraine's favor and should it take back everything to the 2014 line, it's going to have a choice. The choice will be either to continue a much harder war for terrain it may decide it doesn't need or an immediate settlement within NATO and the EU. If that choice takes the potential for nuclear weapons off the table, all the better. That is very much *not* status quo ante. That's a Ukrainian victory of great import...if not a total one. And it's not one Zelensky will ever articulate until the day the Russians sign the document.

The commander of the Azov regiment was also released. Victor Medvedchuk was given in exchange for neither captured Azov fighters and foreign legion fighters

Well as a non-US or UK citizen who fought in Afghanistan I would encourage you to widen that aperture just a bit.  There were members from all across NATO on that mission and we all felt the loss when it went sideways.
Sure resolve is strong now...will it hold if we see dragging this out for a few more acres of blasted land?  I am not so sure.  And I am very sure that if Russia starts to threaten nuclear response and means it, we are going to have an internal conversation.
In the western circles, Crimea and Donbass have become grey areas, particularly Crimea.  I am not saying it is right, or fair but it is reality.  Both areas have strong pro-Russian support - hell LNR and DPR have units fighting for the RA right now, some forced and others - not so sure.  Can someone show some evidence that if Crimea had a fair and free election right now that it would vote to rejoin Ukraine?  Again, based on how 2014 went down, there is doubt, uncertainty.
So let me push this the other way.  How far do you honestly think the western world is willing to go for Crimea?  And be honest here, a limited exchange in Crimea (maybe), and escalation in the region to include Poland and the Baltics (less sure), New York City and/or Dallas (no f#cking way).
The point is that there is a limit and I am sure we are going to approach it, so try not to be disappointed when it lands.  If we are very lucky someone will take out Putin well before we hit this point, and things will work out - or at least the arguing will involve a whole lot less explosions. 
 

I also think that the whole idea of mobilization is more intended to intimidate the West than for real military benefit

Well, I guess we know who is getting mobilized first.

No, aircraft - if anything aircraft are a bigger threat.
Admittedly in the middle of an ocean the aircraft are probably based on a floating platform of some kind - we could call it a ship that carries aircraft?
But look up 'dipping sonar' and 'sonar buoys' and airdropped torpedoes. They're quite nasty if your entire defense plan consists of 'hide under water'.
 
(None of which means that the redeployment is linked to Ukrainian aerial threats; certainly Sevastopol doesn't feel a safe berth for a high value target)

Sure   
After mulling this over with some local politicos, I think Putin will be gone by the Ides of March 2023, plus or minus 90 days.

The Russian Federation will have broken up partially (in a way that is noticeable) by March 2026, plus or minus six months.

My stock-picking record is pretty good, as are my mid- to long-term political predictions.  We'll see in a few years about this one.

There are any number of off-ramps for both of the above things, but by observation many of those off-ramps have narrowed or closed since this all got started. Putin's and Russia's decision space is, through a combination of Ukrainian, Western, and own-goal actions, shrinking steadily.  

The current mobilization-by-stealth (which will shortly shed it's cloak) is more evidence of that.
So if I'm off on the timing, the above events have gradually - or rapidly, by the standards of geo-political timing - become more inevitable.
 
 

ATACMS/ Hrim scare I think - these should be quite able to take out any ship docked in port I think. Losing aircraft is one thing, but having you fleet sunk while at anchor would be something else, there would be strokes and heart attacks all around.

My reaction to Russian mobilization: 
“For the sake of the nation’s life, it was necessary to restore the army’s will to die.”
Alexander Kerensky on the June Offensive
 

So what is the root of the problem? Arabs? Russians? And you have a final-solution in mind for that root cause?

We need to be very careful here, before the thread is torn in half by opposing camps, fighting needlessly over a definition. 
Im not denying @kraze et al's anger (I'm 100% comfortable calling it hate, and agreeing that it's fully justified) but I'm also extremely leery of approaching racism -  @Butschi
did a nice note there.
But I don't see fighting over the differences as relevant to this thread.  
It'll just disrupt the flow of thought, news and analysis that has made thread so great (such an addiction for me!). 
It's the classic online debate war,  where if in theory one side wins, ok yay, well what do you get?  A parade?  Trumpets? Cake? (Mmm caaake).  After we're done laying waste to pages of potential useful insight, well then what? It'll be a wasteland, not the vibrant jungle we have now. How can we talk further without everyone having a rhetorical knife behind their back, waiting to go stabbby-stabby on posts they disagree with?
That's not a discussion thread, that's an arena. 
As we all know and all say to each other -  opening another thread is free and easy!  Go, create and God bless. And I'd actually read that thread. 
But one doesn't poop where one eats 
Except for my useless cat. She sh*ts everywhere.
 
 
 
 

I don't think this comports with history in a real way, nor is it a useful or moral way to look at the struggle in which we are engaged. 
A general note from Nietzsche: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."

To which I'd only add...the "no good Russian but a dead Russian" approach does a pretty bad job for talking about all of the Russians I personally know who abhor and are actively fighting against Putin as we speak. It's a complicated world out there folks, Russia is a pretty nasty autocracy and you personally haven't had to make the choices one makes in that environment. Here's hoping you never have to.

Did you read what Butschi said? It is possible to condemn russian atrocities while warning against going too far and becoming just as bad as the Kremlin propagandists. 
What about the Russians who are horrified by the war and are organising against it? What about the Russians fighting for Ukraine right now?
We must not become the monster we condemn.