cyrano01

Point taken.
I guess a way to put it is that I would suggest starting with known facts and then working out your conclusions. Making a model from that, if you will. The problem with the Thucydides Trap, etc is that they go in the other direction. 

This is pretty close to what I've observed as well. In foreign policy, China has completely alienated the Philippines after it had made enormous progress in suborning it to Chinese interests. It virtually drove Australia into much larger military commitments to the US alliance. Wolf warrior diplomacy induced Japan and South Korea into a trilateral pact with the US. 
All of that is indeed quite stupid. What I see is a nation that has economic and military interests that on many levels it pursues rationally but that cannot stop itself from lunging emotionally almost systematically in ways that unite its opponents...who is anyone in their neighborhood. China, as a diplomat friends likes to say, has no friends.
 

I would double down with UGVs and start looking at fully autonomous/semi-autonomous fleets.  Ukraine right now are the world leaders on military use of unmanned systems.  Reinforce this and lean into corrosive warfare by unmanned.  Problem is range and volume more than C4ISR.  I find it hard to believe that if we can produce billion dollar high tech stealth aircraft, we cannot solve for these issues for cheap unmanned systems. 

Not sure what "air advantage" means anymore to be honest.  Let alone if we could build it in the Ukraine.  I if was going to spend a few billion on it, I would likely double down on small, longer range unmanned systems and deep fires.  I mean all an aircraft really does is carry the "boom", suck up data and try to deny the same to the enemy.  If you can do that other ways cheaper and faster that might create what they are referring to.
I think the idea of "more, better expensive western kit" is fundamentally flawed.  First we cannot produce that equipment in the numbers this war would need.  Second, Ukraine could not field it for years - eg a full SEAD suite.  Third, Ukraine would be challenged to sustain it.  Fourth, it still might not work.  I mean keep pushing what we have, sure.  Better than nothing.  But we get into the "one more Abrams" trap.  We need to start thinking about hacking this war from a Ukrainian perspective and stop projecting "how we would do it" onto them.

Well there is the lesson the Russians will tell themselves, and then there is the hard political lessons.  Despite funding and providing safe haven to cross-border terrorism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_raids), the USA never invaded Canada again.  The costs were simply too high.  They had plans for it until the beginning of WW2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red#:~:text=War Plan Red first set,reinforcement to the Canadians—the).  We were basically Ukraine in this whole equation.
Instead the US realized that they could get what they wanted (i.e. Canadian resources) through trade and cultural immersion.  We were far more valuable as a trading partner than any conquest would have provided.  Once we were fully pulled into the US orbit we essentially became a pseudo-vassal state (client state has also been used, in the end it really doesn't make a difference).  The US got us on the cheap without all the bother of having 40 million democrats mess up the US system.
Will Russia walk away with the same lesson?  Doubtful, at least under this regime.  The lesson will likely be that hard power plays are potentially a lot more expensive than initial sticker price.  Putin might go all NK and try to double down on hard power but are the Russian people in the mood for that?  What is their appetite for another military adventure in the Stans? - last one did not go well either.
My bet is the Putin Regime bet the house on this bloody war and knows they came damned close to losing it.  My bet is that there will be attempts at detent and rapprochement after this war is over.  But they will be bilateral and targeted.  Putin knows our greatest weakness in the west is unity.  So he will pick away at Turkey and other states he thinks he can see cracks in.  Make side deals and try to unravel the opposition.  That way if he does do another end-run somewhere far away-but not too close to China, we will be more divided.
Will Russia learn anything from this war?  That is the question we are really asking.  I simply do not know to be honest.  I doubt it will be "zero", but it may also be the wrong lessons for "reasons".  I guess we will have to see.

Who would have imagined this man would prevail like this when he was first elected?
No, Zelensky isn't perfect and depending on which Ukrainian you ask, he is more or less liked.
But damn was Ukraine lucky to have a man of his caliber in office. It could have been much, much worse. Beside a few minor hiccups in diplomacy (e.g. the missile debris in Poland) he and his team find the right words. Most western politicians wish they could be half the leader he is. 

You forgot the part where no one in the neighborhood ever invites you to the monthly BBQ.  You get awkward dinners with the Chinese couple next door, but it is just so...not normal.  And that weird sweaty NK guy who lives all alone in the house where the lights are never on wants to be your best friend.  

So we have to admit there is a strategic/political wall in this fight.  It will do us no good if we try and pretend it does not exist.  That wall appears to be strategic level campaigning.  Russia can't seem to do it in Ukraine, although we see weak starts.  But Russia cannot take this war to Ukraine's strategic supply chain without starting WW3.
And we are in the same boat.  We all really want Ukraine to win and dammit if the little guy did not simply amaze (and shame us to an extent) on what humans can do if they simply unite and stand up - I think we forgot some of this over the last 30 years or so.  But, and it is one big @ss "But", Ukraine is not worth WW3.  WW3, even if it stayed conventional would quickly escalate to total.  It would result in a requirement for the total defeat of Russia as a nation state.  We could do this, likely at enormous cost, but then we would have to live with the aftermath.  The cost and effort to 1) defeat Russia, and 2) keep the post-war situation from completely deteriorating would cost so much that I suspect we would be very stretched to try and counter the rise of China.  In fact, worst case, it could break us.  I suspect China already knows this and by keeping Russia as a strategic spoiler they may be able to sustain some options they want to.
A defeated post-war Russia would very likely shatter completely into its loose federations.  We would have a 6000 nuclear weapon problem to deal with, along with a humanitarian crisis that makes Gaza look like a "minor boo-boo".  And this is all making the huge assumption that the whole thing does not go nuclear, which it very likely would as we start bombing Moscow.  It would not start with a full scale attack, more likely a single release in Ukraine as a warning shot. So maybe Kharkiv or Kherson.  We would likely see battlefield use even before that.
So any campaigning in Russia would have to be under the waterlines.  Cyber (to a point), SOF and internal resistance.  If people think sanctions take time, these sorts of strategic campaigns can take years to set up and see gains from.  They can also go sideways very quickly and get way out of hand...see WW3.  So, no, I do not think that strategic disruption or dislocation is really an option for us anymore than it is for Russia.  We have a high intensity conventional war in a box (thank God).  We are just going to have to live with it.

3. That is, it is mainly infantry who fight, mostly with “legs”, the bulk of the equipment is in the tactical rear. The fact that from time to time a couple of tanks and an armored fighting vehicle goes to the front line to “carefully work” will not pass the point. The bloody carousel continues - infantry + mortars and artillery. This is a format that plays into the hands of our enemy, who significantly surpasses us in human resources, which he, moreover, treats precisely as a resource, and not as valuable to his own citizens.
Obviously, figuratively speaking. “stop a little” and think about what to do about it. It is clear that the enemy will not stop “voluntarily”; he must be forced to do so. This can only be done in one way - if the volume and number of losses in the same human resource on which he is now relying increases multiple times. That is, the enemy’s rate of “consumption” must exceed the rate of its recovery.
Technologically, we cannot do this yet (because there is no advantage in the entire range of weapons so significant that it would lead to real “devastation” in the ranks of the enemy, neither quantitative nor qualitative). Moreover, our ammunition capabilities, let’s say, are also quite limited.
And General Zaluzhny, despite all the hate that stupid “strategists” gave him, in his assessments and conclusions regarding the current development of the situation, he was not only 100% right, but I would even say 150%. Either technology or a positional dead end.
However, the reality is that we are not yet able to independently increase our own technological “capabilities” on the battlefield - neither resource-wise, nor financially, nor even through organizational and administrative means. Relying solely on the help of the allies in this matter is, of course, possible, but this is a rather unreliable matter.
Therefore, it remains to look for a way, directly, figuratively speaking, “on the battlefield itself.” In my opinion, from the entire price list of possible solutions and taking into account the currently superior format of organizing and conducting combat operations, we can only provide our own infantry with a “new quality” so that it is certainly superior to the enemy infantry in this format of combat clashes (for now, unfortunately, we have to think exactly about such a “consumable” method).
Or, it is very important to work quantitatively and qualitatively on the artillery component of our army. There are certain problems with the latter. We are very dependent in this matter on our allies, who, in turn, do not have bottomless supplies of art and ammunition for it for us.
Therefore, at this stage, we should thoughtfully and seriously engage, first of all, with the infantry, with constant and persistent attention to our artillery.
Its “new quality” should consist of significant improvements in three main areas - training (I mean the whole complex, from moral and psychological training to special tactical and fire), weapons + equipment (they should be in the infantry in SUFFICIENT QUANTITIES, and not only to dominate the enemy’s analogues in terms of their “performance characteristics”, and this should apply to the entire complex, from tactical drones, mortars, communications equipment, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, ending with “spores”, protective equipment, thermal imaging and all-weather sights and the standard weapons of the shooter), and the tactical level command link: from the squad commander (assault group), to the brigade commander and regiment commander must not only be READY to organize and control infantry combat in a variety of conditions, but also BE ABLE to do so do.
We must finally understand that the enemy will strive every now and then to repeat the “fortresses” of Bakhmut, Avdievka, etc., in which our infantry will come into contact at a high rate (even with a comparable, or even slightly lower, rate of infantry grinding down ) the enemy himself). This plays into his hands; in the mobilization tension he outplays us, because he has a much greater mobilization resource.
The fact that to this day the Kremlin regime, due to the internal political peculiarities of the “current moment,” has so far reduced the pace of mobilization, do not mislead you. As soon as it discharges (and this, obviously, will happen one way or another), these rates will begin to increase significantly. Moreover, during this time the enemy can significantly improve and increase the capabilities of its system of mobilization deployment of troops.
Stopping this, or better said, radically changing it, is only possible when, figuratively speaking, the enemy begins to realize the fact that in order to kill one Ukrainian infantryman at the front, he must spend his 15-20 "TulovyCh" in any situation and under any circumstances. It is then that the mobilization race, which the Kremlin has obviously chosen as one of the main elements of its war strategy, will lose its meaning for it.
In the meantime, in the current conditions, it is quite profitable for him to organize some next “meat grinder” over and over again - today it is Bakhmut and Avdeevka, tomorrow it could be Seversk, Ugledar or Kupyansk with Liman. At the same time, the result is not so important to him as the process itself.
 
 

Well it is impossible to tell how long they were tracking that Leo but the sensor to shooter linking was fast enough to ping a lone tank.  This is beyond what the RA has been demonstrating in this war.  Much more like what we have been seeing from the Ukrainians.  We will have to see if more examples show up.  It does speak to why the UA has been having a harder time of it.

Because if you bunch them up together they get killed faster.  RA got tired of losing entire companies and started using them in 1s and 2s a while back.  The UA appears to be going the same way.  Now in UA case it may be force preservation but it also may be that RA C4ISR has finally started to catch up.
Edit:  just rewatched that video.  So that tank was spotted by the UAS probably 1-2 kms away.  It looks like it took maybe 3-4 rounds to knock it out? That is crazy precision.  When did the RA start hitting like that?
If they had sent 4 tanks into that field there would probably be 4 KO’d tanks.

Ouch.  Well we do make up for it in ghusto and much fewer national caveats.  Look we have a Devils Agreement with the US on continental defence.  They will pay for it all and when the war comes we will be the battlefield.  As to global and power projection, well we do show up…shambles that we are.  And we can fight, plenty of evidence of that.  We are kinda the imperial auxiliaries.  Just enough to keep the empire happy but not so much we have to give up something.

Ya, I gotta agree.  His track record would make him one helluva deep plant if we is working Russian side. 
No, I think we got a guy who is just wrung out and really tired of being tired, and scared all the time.  I mean from his viewpoint maybe it is all doom and gloom.  We do need to keep trying to use and source facts though.  This cannot simply become an opinion pulpit.  In fact if he has corroboration I would very much like to see it.  We do need to accept that if Russia has a breaking point then Ukraine has one too.  I am not seeing it but he definitely is - I am just not sure how he got there.  

I don't have an optimistic or pessimistic view of NATO. I have a factual view that NATO has far greater technical capabilities, better trained and larger armies and economic might that Russia cannot hope to match. Russia has its hand full fighting a country with a patchwork logistical net, mixed equipment and 1/3 the population...but enormous motivation. Russia violating Article 5 will provide that in bucketloads to the Finns, Poles, Rumanian, US, etc. 
As to the accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO, neither was much interested until the AustroHungarians invaded Serbia...excuse me...until Russia invaded Ukraine and one got in almost immediately and the other is already integrated to the point that they would be alongside fighting from the get....adding something like a million NATO forces to any showdown?  
 

There's been plenty of examples of a weak and brittle nation on the brink of collapse over the past half century. Afghanistan and South Vietnam being the most obvious examples. Ukraine reminds me more of South Korea than either of those countries. Definitely not perfect to be sure but with a strong sense of national will and the determination to fight for their country. Hell, Ukraine is even better than the ROK was. People are seriously talking about Zelensky losing an election during an existential war while absolutely nobody would have thought that about Rhee Syngman or Park Chung-hee. 

Agreed but that author (Aslund) lives in copium land IMO. He has not got a great track record of predicting the Russians are gonna collapse any day now, and I label him as a propagandist more than a serious journalist. 

Speaking as one who lived through the “Red Scare” BS of “Tail Gunner Joe,” and not the history books, the opinions of many that he was right, doesn’t matter. His actions were absolutely wrong, and unconstitutional! The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution affirms not only freedom of speech, but also the freedom of association. It completely disgusts me when politicians (who swear an oath to “defend the Constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic), media, and individuals, decide the Constitution applies only to them and their beliefs and positions. The Constitution, and every Amendment to the Constitution must be treated as a whole and applies to everyone EQUALLY whether or not you like what it says, and every part of the Constitution MUST be afforded equal weight, no matter whether you like it or not!
 
I might not like what might result from the conforming to the constitutional requirements, but I must respect them!

anti-vax 'communication'.  You mean baseless lies and misinformation?  
And what suppression?  At least in the US the lies were huge and everywhere and now there's big uptake in people not getting vaccinated for everything, not just covid.  We've already seen, in the US, outbreaks in children of whooping cough in anti-vax clusters.  And even a little polio.  
UKR is at war for survival and is completely within it's rights to censor things.  In societies not under this kind of threat, I don't want censorship.  I think it's best to counter lies w truth, though sometimes it takes a lot of people getting polio for them to figure out the truth I suppose.

Are you a nihilistic-liberal conservative?  Or maybe a hippie-who-grew-up conservative?  You gotta whole chaotic neutral vibe going. 

So I suspect that the UA is conducting a form of non-linear campaigning - another feature that comes out of SOF, been a trend in this war to watch what used to be SOF getting pulled deeper into the conventional world.  So rather than a linear systemic campaign of 1+2+3 = 6, they are really at X + Y = Z, solve for X.  So this means essentially projecting a lot of uncertainty on an opponents system and seeing what will happen.  They tried western breaches last May/Jun...did not work.  They then went to nips and bites along the line with a view to seeing when and where the RA line would fail.
The op south of Kherson has the same feel.  By creating lateral strain - forcing RA to shift resources left and right, they are likely looking to create fractures and fissures.  If it works and they see an opportunity they can try to exploit.  This matches the battlefield reality of the toxicity of mass.  Doctrine says mass forces in the back.  Try and main axis, then a few secondary and be ready to exploit whatever works rapidly in a Mission Command pull manner.  Problem being that massing is now highly visible, even by RA ISR.  So if the UA park a couple Mech Bdes 10km back they are seen, so the RA know where to put there c-forces.  This, plus crazy ranges, are why troop densities in this war are so low but lines are holding.
The UA answer is to not park a couple Bdes anywhere but instead put tactical pressure along the line while 1) still conducting deep strikes and 2) offering a sink hole at Avdiivka.  Kherson is one of those moves.  It is definitely not a full on river assault, if it was we would know it.  But it puts the threat of one on the table.  The RA can swing resources over to counter, further weakening elsewhere or try to ignore it.
In strategic terms it is called "negotiating while advancing".  You can win by increments until the opponents system buckles or you go as far as you need to - like a dog that keeps creeping into the living room one paw at a time.  You keep tossing it back.  But eventually you have to take a pee and then it steals the couch.  You get back and it is already snuggled up to the kids and you have lost as your system collapses.
Whether Kherson becomes a full couch grab depends on how long the RA can hold it.   

Except the part where your post (translating from another) appears to blame the EU and western powers for somehow funding Russia’s war.  This is simply not true based on the same website the post references.  That is weak and bordering on disinformation.  And I care very much about avoiding those pitfalls as they don’t do anyone any favours and in fact can cause some harm.
We aren’t going to fully “deprive” Russia of money in the short term. That same site outlines that India and China are the main buyers of Russian oil and that is not going to change.  It is not good news for Russia in the long term as those two nations are going to gut them price wise as Russia can no longer sell to its former best customers.
Let me be really and brutally honest here.  Guilting the West as a theory on how to sustain support is counterproductive.  We have enough guilt and shaming going on internally right now.  Having a nation we are trying to support turn around and point fingers, blame and shame is going to go nowhere fast.  I am not sure why some people do not get that but these kind of narratives only make the job of those of us who do fully support Ukraine much harder.
 May as well hit this one while we are at it.  Since Apr 23 sure but look at the trend overall:
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/russia/federal-government-revenue-and-expenditure-general/federal-government-revenue-oil--gas#:~:text=Russia Federal Government Revenue%3A Oil %26 Gas data is updated monthly,RUB bn in Feb 2009.
So Russia has already lost money over time and that was all money that had to pay for a lot more than this war.  “Russia spent 170b on the war but got 550b” is extremely misleading as they are paying for a lot of stuff other than the war with that 550B in the first place.
They are the only major economy that is seeing negative growth:
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
As to the means for this war.  Well they can likely keep paying poor Russian bumpkins to fight at the front but keeping military industry afloat or buying jacked up priced stuff abroad is going to get harder.
As to “defeating Russia” well as we have talked about a lot, we had better start negotiating what that actually looks like.  Because a complete collapse is likely outside its timeline - economics will definitely impact the next war.  Military capability seems to have entered a deadlock.
So as I have said repeatedly, we may start to have to learn to live with things as they stand now.  I am hopeful that a snappy winter offensive may break the deadlock but we are running out of time here.  I suspect keeping Ukraine able to defend what is has is going to endure.  But massing what it may need to break what could be a simple fact of modern warfare may be out of reach.  The economic pain Russia will suffer is going to be generational and greatly hamper redo of their own military, which is a good thing.
 

Definitely could be.  I am at that wonderful age where I cannot really recall where stuff comes from that pops into my head.  I guess I should enjoy it as what comes next is stuff falling out of my head.

Look back at each previous generation. Once people hit a 'certain age' the opinion gets expressed that everything's going to hell in a handbasket. The young think for one reason, the old for another. You can go back to Greek literature for examples. The hot-blooded youths  think the top-down system is corrupt, the oldster oligarchs think the nihilism rabble threaten stability at the base. Only the details change over time. Granted, sometimes things do indeed go to hell, but the pendulum appears to swings from one culprit to the other. Che Guevara had different motives from Francisco Franco, who had different motives from Pol Pot, who had different motives from Tojo who had different motives from Lenin. Regardless, the result was still things going to hell.

It can be quite amazing how many sources an adversary can exploit for intelligence gathering. Future U.S.President John F. Kennedy was almost cashiered by the U.S. Navy during WW II because he was having an assail with a known German agent. Every young service member is reminded that “loose lips sink ships,” but most don’t realize that some of the most dangerous are “service employees” such as waiters, cleaning services, (previously elevator operators), etc. because we tend to discount their presence, and they are invisible to us. When I was stationed at MCAS Iwakuni in Japan, we’d sometimes go to Kintai Castle, about 10 kilometers from the base, and home to the only original five-span bridge left in Japan. We’d clime to the top of the Castle, which was on top of a “mountain,” to an observation deck. You could put a one yen piece into a telescope and zoom in to see the entire base, including the flight line. One day, a Staff Sgt. in our Squadron S2 (intelligence) happened to zoom in on one of our F-4Js (a fighter bomber that was so new and advanced in 1970 that the Navy didn’t allow any to be deployed into Vietnam, while the Avionics Marines had the Radome open to work on the radar, and he could see many of the Secret components of the radar. As soon as he got back to the Squadron, the C.O. ordered that tents be used to hide the radar if the radome had to be opened on the flight line. Bottom line is that hundreds, if not thousands of Marines over the years used those same observation telescopes to look at the base over the years, but never put two and two together.
Most intelligence isn’t gathered in one fell swoop, but by piecing together a picture from a multitude of unrelated sources. @TheCp’t and @LongLeftFlank both have different ways of forming their “intentions assessments,” but both work, so there shouldn’t be any “comments from the peanut gallery” about how effective either are.

I think this might be strategic signaling...or BS to try and divide western positions.  I do not believe for a hot second that any poll coming out of Russia is not actually coming out of the Kremlin right now.  So Putin has just appeared to give himself permission for peace talks.  Could be genuine or could be garbage to try and appeal to weak western support - "look they are trying to be reasonable".
Or could just be pinging to see how everyone reacts.  It is basically everything except genuine public opinion in Russia.