The_Capt

You want that for a shooting war? Look up Dunning-Kruger and then maybe have a cup of tea. I am not sure what military operations you have been on or what generals you have served under but I would be fascinated to hear how you applied “percentage or a set of narrative labels defined by percentage ranges” to an active combat AO. You do realize we are talking about managed chaos here? The land of tacit knowledge and old fashion instinct? In fact you missed “consequences” from your likelihood framework - ie “how important is this particular event, and then how likely is it to happen”, which is only one way to conduct a forecast assessment. Well this was fun but time to move on.

I also question the “huge losses” part. Proportionately how huge were they really? Do we have valid data? What were the attacker/defender loss ratios and how do they compare to historical examples? I argue at Kherson in retaking a major urban centre - the overall operational objective - the losses were incredibly light compared to other urban battles. Kherson costed, but it was no Verdun or Stalingrad. By that French report Ukraine has 600-700k volunteers in the pipe that need training support. So we know they are not out of human capital. The UA seems very capable of operations and is looking to create “3 new army corps” by this spring - this is not a battered military force. I think part of the problem is that this is a war of the old ways. It is attritional in nature, of which “corrosive” is a new spin but still attritional. That means a grinding fight until one side collapses. This entire war is a meta-attritional exercise built on corrosive operations. I think we in the west are shocked by this and somehow convinced ourselves that we had evolved away from this type of war. I also think technology has shifted that evolution towards attrition by stressing and countering what made “fast and easy” possible before. Corrosive warfare is essentially “faster precision attrition” in nature but it comes with a cost. But those costs must remain manageable for one side over the other. In this war, it is pretty clear that the equation is in Ukraine’s favour for now. In the end Kherson is a clear example of a breaking RA system. One that has been breaking and failing since end-March, largely because it was not designed for this war. The UA is designed for this war, they are excelling at it. “How long, where and when” are simply the adjectives of Russian defeat, a defeat that has already happened. Russia is isolated and alienated, its deterrent power based on conventional military capability at a nadir. It has united NATO and the West in ways none of our leaders could - Finland and Sweden FFS. And it political house is shaking. Russia has failed to achieve any of its strategic objectives, and in many ways has made things worse for itself - the war could stop right now and none of that would change.

True. Russia is a crumbling empire (again) with a massive inferiority complex sitting on over a trillion dollars in oil and gas. We can choke it out of this war. We can choke it out of global influence. I am not entirely sold we can choke it out of its near abroad indefinitely. We can push Russia into being North Korea, but North Korea is still freaking North Korea. Worse, we isolate it too much and we could wind up with an extremist nationalistic ideology that makes Putin look like a Sunday School teacher. I agree that the resources to prosecute this war can be savaged to the point of breaking, but are we really talking about rendering Russia completely defenseless? Except for those 6000ish nuke of course. Something like that, even if it is decided as a good idea, is going to take longer than 2 years to engineer. You take it too far and you might wind up with several million starving Russians pouring over the border. I suspect we will be risk-managing that troublesome border for years, or at least until Russia finally comes to its senses...which ought to be any minute now?

You forgot..."good news, remember at election time!"

Hezbollah has been doing it to Israel on a shoe string for a very long time. Russia could out-source to Wagner and other PMCs to do all sorts of "illegal non-state sanctioned actions" on that border for years. This is before factoring in subversion and state sponsored terrorism inside Ukraine itself. Russia's mistake was thinking that it was 1990 and hard (and very expensive) conventional military power would work. I guess the real question is "Russia, Ukraine what the f#ck is up with that?!" Like seriously is Ukraine really worth this much to Russia in the end?

Unless the RA fold first. But a solid point. I think the cost/value of Donbas and Crimea will remain part of the overall political calculus even it remains unspoken. Well here I think you are being a bit pessimistic in assessment. The UA took Kherson with somewhere between a 1.5-1.0 to 1.0 force ratio, which is just nuts. Against a dug in defender who had held the terrain for over six months?! They retook a major urban area of about 300k people without being pulled into an army eating street fight. They attrited Russian supply lines to the point the Russians were forced to pull out, delivering a major strategic blow to Putin - and you wanted more?! As to Russian logistics, how many abandoned vehicles and high value equipment, reports of antiquated Russian equipment, horror stories of Russian wounded, broken Russian guns and solider cell phone intercepts do we need? Oryx is showing over 2000 lost logistical vehicles and these are just the ones someone took a picture of. As to Russian economic prospects - well I guess it depends on who you listen to (I am no expert in this field): https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2022/12/05/russias-economic-prospects-have-gone-from-bad-to-terrible/?sh=5c5e104474bc https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88664 https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/russias-economy-end-2022-deeper-troubles Seems to be "not good". Now is it country-breaking "not good"? Well I do not know, especially when combined with somewhere between 250-350k casualties, a string of battlefield defeats and increasing abandonment by Russians well off enough to get out. This is a downward trajectory, but is it steep enough? Don't know. Also keep in mind Ukraine militarily is on an upward trajectory while the RA continues its slide. At some point something is going to give (again) on the battlefield. The question is "will it be enough?"

It really is. Great lines here: We will make every effort to ensure the training of the requested 15,000 soldiers, and perhaps more, before the end of the winter. For their part, the Americans, the English and the Canadians proceed in the same way, using the same training frameworks, so that the battalions trained are interoperable. The Ukrainians have an estimated pool of 600,000 to 700,000 people ready to enlist to defend the Ukrainian homeland. They are the ones who must be trained, because only professional soldiers have been hired by Ukraine for the moment. Russia for its part has called in 300,000 reservists, of which 200,000 were forcibly recruited, with many malfunctions, deaths, sick and elderly having been counted initially. It will therefore be difficult to make these reservists fully operational. Rather than as combatants, they will be used to multiply the lines of defense on the illegally occupied territories. Thanks to the sanctions, Russia lacks raw materials and electronic components to equip itself with new equipment. This is why Russian soldiers take televisions, washing machines, etc. when they retire: the objective is not so much to decorate their homes, but to supply Russian industry with materials. However, this will not be enough to restore his power. https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/16/comptes-rendus/cion_def/l16cion_def2223022_compte-rendu#

I have to say this is also in line with my thinking, and why I lean towards a ZOS scenario in Dobas and Crimea. To the picture you paint above, add the fact that Ukraine will own Dobas and Crimea, complete with all their problems. Russia will not only peck away along the border, it will go back to its A-game and support active subversion and insurgency in those formerly held regions. How active these regions may be? Or how open to conducting insurgency? are open questions; however, given their behaviour in this war, particularly the LNR and DPR active participation in the war, I have some grave concerns. Ukraine could end up in an endless sniping war on the border as Russia pulls back, rebuilds and flexes now and again - pretty much what it was doing before. It could also end up trying to manage two insurgencies actively supported by Russia, and none of that is a good news story as insurgencies are notoriously difficult when supported from the outside and offer a lot of opportunities to lose ones strategic narrative. And it is going to be doing all this in the middle of reconstruction on the scale of the Marshal Plan while trying to sustain support from an increasingly less-interested and more distracted (Hey look Hawkeye got run over by his own snowplow!) western public. The other side of the dilemma is a shattered Russia no longer able to prosecute bad on Ukraine. Which sounds like a great idea but at that point Russia may be in free fall and unravelling, Ukraine and the West will then have a whole new set of problems, not the least of which is revenge attacks using WMDs by non-state or pseudo state groups, having a Russian Civil War spill over, or a refugee crisis for the ages, or...well pick your poison. There is a scenario where we get a stable western orientated Ukraine and a functioning Russia whose main aim is not to make everyone else's lives miserable so they can feel better about themselves, on the road to some sort of renormalization - but man, it is one slim needle to thread as far as I can see. But we are notoriously weak on assessing the outcome of this war here, I can only hope smarter people than me are on it.

3 new corps by this spring?! 75k fully trained and equipped troops?! I am starting to wonder if the UA isn't planning on marching on Moscow.

Ok, well let’s unpack this one then. First all war is personal, so discussions of the war outcome while people on this thread are in the middle of it is hard to do objectively. Second, I am not sure what you mean by “weaker”…as compared to what or who? We have discussed a range of outcomes from nuclear Armageddon with a prelude of western intervention, to a complete breakdown of Russia, to a partial breakdown of Russia, to a unilateral Russian withdrawal, a forced Russian withdrawal, a negotiated end state with variations on who controls what, a frozen conflict a la Korea, and finally a Russian resurgence forcing Ukraine to negotiate from a position of weakness. We have discussed the political ramifications and potential outcomes at length of each of these, as well as geopolitical implications. We have discussed post-war challenges as the relate to reconstruction and pulling Ukraine into a western orbit, and how they are directly linked to the battlefield. We have discussed the potential impacts of a broken Russia at length. So if we are indeed “weak on assessing the outcome of this war”, I am afraid I do not see it. In fact that sentence really does not make a lot of sense as one cannot really assess something that has not happened yet. We can project and assess those predictions - humans are very good at remembering the future. Your original post that started this discussion read as “we can only see victory as driving the Russians out by force from all of Ukraine”. Well ok, that is one version of military victory. It won’t mean anything if we leave Ukraine a shattered nation and do not pull into western economic and defence alliances. It is also not the only possible military outcome, as I note above. Frankly I am not sure it is the most likely, but it is on the board and I think we all hope it goes that way. In reality the outcome of this war is pretty much decided in many ways. Russia has by all metrics definitively failed to achieve it somewhat pliable stated strategic goals. It has failed on its most likely real strategic goals. And in many ways has engineered the exact opposite of its strategic intent, it is trying to put out fires with gasoline. Nothing is going to change this at this point as full reversal on the battlefield is highly improbable. So what we are really discussing is just how bad the Russian loss will be. Absolute best case for Russia right now is the conflict freezes in place and they can declare some sort of victory in the Donbas and southern Ukraine. At this point Putin may actually survive this debacle if that happens. But we know that this is unlikely because Ukraine is not done yet nor is western support. So we are back to variations on what Russian defeat looks like, and what Ukrainian victory looks like. There are many variations on these visions, even in the political signalling going on. I think maximalist positions are dangerous and may do more harm than good but obviously others disagree. So if all that is “weak” then I think you are on the wrong forum to be honest. But hey if you can find a better one, send us the link.

Fair points and I would not say totally out of the realm of possibility. I am not so sure Russia is as much a monolithic nation of stone as you describe - human societies do not work that way, even 1940s Japan had a breaking point. I am not sure what Kherson predictions you are talking about to be honest. We saw the fall coming and it came. It was more orderly than I think many hoped for but Russia withdrew after taking a pounding. It is another fair point on being overly optimistic. That said the RA has the hallmarks of a failing system across the board. It has lost strategic and operational initiative and continues to demonstrate it is well behind the learning curve in this war. No military organization can keep this up indefinitely and pouring more poorly trained troops into it is not a solution. The RA is broken in ways it cannot fix in this war, maybe the next one. All that is adding up to a situation where it does not look good for the Russian military at all. The only way this war fundamentally changes at this point is if the West pulls it support. At that point the UA will lose ISR advantage and quickly run out of western supplied capabilities. The the RA could freeze this thing as the playing field becomes more level. Now as to the West losing the peace after this war, that is a whole other discussion and one that does concern me greatly.

So I read through this a few times now and for the life of of cannot get the point you are driving at here. So this war is solely between Ukraine and Russia? The West gets no voice in it at all? How about the people that actually live in Donbas and Crimea? Negotiation is a “nice to have”? - the vast majority of war end without unconditional surrender. It hasn’t happened yet so we should ignore all that and go with what exactly? There are many roads to victory or defeat in this war, as well as negotiating an end-state, just because you cannot see them or “believe” does not mean they do not exist. I mean, ok we have your opinion and I have pointed out some potential weaknesses in your position that you may want to widen your analytical framework somewhat. You can do with that what you will. This thread is not a betting pool or some sort of platform selling something. It was, and is an attempt to understand this war better, as it happens, and cut through a lot of misinformation out there. You have people on this thread who do this sort of work for a living with decades of experience in this area - from professional military, to historians to gamers. We are trying to figure it out. We have avoided detailed predictions, and frankly when we have made them we have been a lot more accurate than the mainstream - Fall offensive anyone? Your position appears to be “ya, ya with all that but here is what I think!” Ok, well now we know what you think. Let’s keep working on it.

200k sounds like a big number but we are still talking over 700kms of front. That comes to about 258 men per km, which factoring for rotations and combat support is likely about a company per km. This will shore up the line but it is not going to make it airtight. Russian ISR is nowhere near the UAs so they have to spread out to cover more ground while the UA stay back in some sectors while seeing Russian moves before they even start. My honest bet is that the RA folds in 2023 - is has done this three times now and the big one is a’comin. Adding more troops is actually making things worse by stressing an already pretty beaten up logistics and C2 system. Now how hard and fast that fold happens is really unknown but if we see continued levels of support to the UA, or better yet increases, and the continuing trend of corrosion on the RA - and let’s all say it together - all along the entire length of its operational system, the RA is doomed to failure. I suspect the milbloggers in the Russian sphere already know this. The real question is “what happens when the RA faces operational collapse?” Does it cascade into a full strategic collapse? Does it trigger a political collapse? Or worse a complete social implosion? The Russians had chances to get off this train from the start but stubbornly refused them. There were off-ramps, Ukraine was even suing for peace back in March, remember “neutral nation”? But the Russians just kept digging that hole. Life is hard, it is harder when one is dumb. What the west needs to remember, and take very personally, is that Russia took us all on this ride, not just Ukraine.

Well I was in agreement right up to the point that the UA pulled off two separate operational level offensives over 500 kms apart, while still holding onto ground in the Donbas last Fall. That demonstrated a level of operational capacity and depth I am not sure anyone was ready to believe. I am half convinced Zaluzhny was playing things up to convince the Russians of what they already want to hear, while the UA in reality has more than a few rabbits left in the hat. I am not saying we should pause on support but the UA is coming off two major victories while the RA is in palliative care. This combined with some rewriting the rules of warfare has me pretty much gobsmacked. We will see.

Wow, a lot of absolutes there. I would offer it is nowhere near that cut and dry. Victory is a pretty squishy concept and hard tying it to lines on a map is a good way to get people killed for nothing. Pre-2014 borders are not a pre-requisite for NATO membership, it is a political body that makes up the rules as it goes. We could simply redraw the borders and allow Ukraine to enter. What we do need is for the shooting to stop because no one wants an article 5 on signing day. As to Russian withdraw, well a political collapse back home would definitely work, has before. Or they could get pushed back to Feb 24 lines, when I suspect the pressure to end this thing will increase. I mean seriously the risks of retaking some of these areas is not small. In the end “decision of force of arms” sounds good and plays well in movies but the reality is that at some point people are going to get tired of dying and some sort of negotiable end state will be put forward. In that package the real dealing can start on reparations, warcrimes and possible renormalization with Russia. Or Russia can choose the way of pain and drive off a cliff, at which point we will feel good for about 12 seconds and then have a whole other set of world ending problems.

Ya that would work, a Crimean honey pot. Pull the RA in and then drop the bridge and hammer connectors. It is pretty much an upscaled strategy they used at Kherson. The Russians are likely dumb enough to fall for it too. Right now I would worry about that central corridor between south of Kherson and Donbas. Set that up and cut it right up to the Sea of Azov. We might actually see conventional manoeuvre there as it makes sense if the UA can set it up. Problem would normally be holding it with threats on both sides but the RA is pretty much out of offensive options. They will likely try some weak tea tactical shoves but a full scale operational offensive by the RA is not likely, or at least a successful one. I would do this in three operations: Cut the corridor - use pressure on both ends of the line to pull RA apart and then go up the middle. Box up Donbas - squeeze them back into a box and keep squeezing Crimea Last - Once you have done 1 & 2, all the while Crimea is sealed up and hammered. The go in and try to retake. The real unknown is whether the UA has that sort of capacity. If someone had asked me in Sep I would have said no, but after Kharkiv and Kherson it is clear the UA has a lot of operational game.

Well that is an interesting question. If we put the whole “will Crimea see Ukrainian occupation or liberation.?” question to the side, Crimea on the map looks like a tough nut to crack without full sea control. It has a pretty narrow corridor in and around Armiansk, about 10kms across. And then the big bridge on the other side, and a lot of water around it. Not the easiest conventional problem set. The staff college approach would be to 1) establish air control, 2) establish sea control and 3) try a multi-prong air, land and sea assault that can be mutually supported but far enough apart to keep the RA hopping. The UA does not have the ability to do any of this…unless we totally missed a memo. Pre-conditions would have to be to isolate the region by taking out that big bridge and hitting as much that flies and floats as possible. So C4ISR superiority and long range Air and Maritime strike - a SOF/partisan network in Crimea would also be a really good idea. You then normally hit internal transportation infra, comms and utilities but that will depend on how much capacity the UA has and just how badly they are willing to damage the place. The good news here is that the UA can establish the pre-conditions but they are going to have to rethink the follow through. Here corrosive warfare may once again shine. Hitting the RA logistics and C4ISR in Crimea while cutting the region off may erode the RA forces there into retreat. Much like Kherson push and squeeze em until they just leave or collapse trying to hold on. There is no viable option single blunt force single axis assault on that 10km corridor in the short term. The RA will have mined the crap out of it and it forces the UA to highly concentrate which will mean brutal losses to artillery. So you have to kill all the guns and ammo, cut off food and supplies to the troops dug in and then try pulse-pushing, with healthy dashes of amphib ops in those wetlands to crack the thing. Nothing about it will be fast or easy. If I were on the staff I would recommend, isolate, siege and a campaign of precision strike to be honest. Let the HIMARs do the work, but you are going to need a lot of them. Bottle up the place and shoot fish in the barrel until they tap out. If the UA wants to take real estate Donbas is the better option in the shorter term. Last point. If this war does do WMDs, my guess it will be on that corridor in northern Crimea. Not saying it will, but that is almost tailor made for WMD strikes to blunt a UA attack. It would be on helluva escalation as we have discussed but that is the place to draw the final Putin line if there is one. If Russia holds back there then the entire WMD deterrence/threat falls apart until one gets to the Russian border. I guess it will come down to just how much the Crimea is worth to Ukraine. They do not need it to win this war, Russia may fall apart by the time they get there regardless. But if the Russians dig in, it is going to be a slog.

I think there is a coherent argument that the Russian military is in collapse, the rate of that collapse is really the outstanding question. Personally I see collapse a "a failure to be able to sustain option spaces". Collapses come in many flavors, the dramatic cascade failures get all the ink but I think history demonstrates that these are really just the punctuation marks on a longer process of systemic degradation. Russia has seen its option spaces continually shrink in the prosecution of this war. They had the most options on 24 Feb, and ever since then it has been a slow and steady compression. Some has been forced by the UA and some by Russia itself. Examples: - On 23 Feb 22 Russia had pretty broad options, which included to not-invade. Then on the 24th those options began to shrink. They committed pretty much their entire ready-force on one Hail Mary plan: no Lviv cut-off back up, no strategic erosion campaign fall back. - By the end of March, they had lost all viable options in the North around Kyiv and their main effort. So they politically weaseled into new "real" objectives, which was simply accepting and re-selling the reduced options they already had. - By the summer, they had run out of strategic options that relied on manoeuvre. Recall those maps with sweeping red arrows drawn all over them - those were utter fiction. The RA had lost an ability to sustain that sort of warfare over the Spring. So they were down to attrition and mass based options at Severodonetsk, making incremental gains while simply trying to hold on everywhere else. - Enter the HIMAR campaigns, along with other capability and by Aug/Sep 22 Russia no longer had viable offensive options at the operational level. - Then they lost any an all options around Kharkiv and Kherson over the Fall. They are literally down to symbolic tactical grinding at Bakhmut and holding on by their fingernails everywhere else. Their force generation capability is slumping downward and their last option of nuclear weapons is a dead end. All the while the UA develops capability and a broader array of options in an expanding portfolio. Simple equation that says a lot about this war: Capability x Speed/Agility/Precision = Options. Options x Cognitive Advantage (Information) = Outcomes. A whole lot is trending towards zero for Russia. As to when the whole thing starts failing fast...l that is the big question. My money is the next major move by the UA is flank pressure to pull the RA east and west simultaneously. Lotta opportunity on that Eastern flank and keeping pressure up south of Kherson - in my dreams an amphib action is on the table, but that is likely asking way too much (now there is one interesting CM campaign). And then when the the RA is stretched thin in the middle, they will try to cut that corridor and separate the two. A drive to Melitopol is the most likely, but there are other...wait for it...options. With the strategic corridor cut the two AOs are now connected by land only thru that bridge Ukraine already damaged, and air/sea but those are not optimal if the UA hold the North Coast of the Azov Sea. All traffic basically has to go around the back across the Black Sea while that big bridge gets HIMARsed - Crimea basically becomes another larger Kherson pocket on the wrong side of a water obstacle. The UA can then squeeze until things turn purple. Will this be enough for the political house to come down - unknown, but I definitely think it has potential. Someone in the Russian power mechanism, as ponzi as it is, has to realize that one 70 year old losing a major land war is simply not worth it at some point.

“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country."

I think we discussed this at length back last Fall during the “dreaded” Russian mobilization. This is not 1941, you cannot simply put a rifle into someone’s hand and expect them to be able to fight effectively on the modern battlefield. Back in 1941-42 how many of those Russian conscripts were farm kids? How many are coming from urban centres today? I am willing to bet most of the urban conscripts do not even know how to survive under field conditions let alone fight in them. Russia can mobilize all it wants but it is going to make things worse for them not better. Only a total amateur would think that more poorly trained and equipped - and apparently concentrated, human mass is a good thing in this war.

Could not have said it better. Lot of Hollywood myths about Law of Armed Conflict and it serves no one any good to play fast and loose with them. That said, bad shoots happen all the time - e.g. the infamous Iraq/Afghan wedding Pred strikes. The right answer is “we will fully investigate this incident and share the results with our partners in due course”…not sure why some are having so much trouble with that one. Russia is pissing missiles all over the place like a blind tomcat, so stay on the high road and go back to killing legit targets, not like there is a shortage on that market.

Infantry and infantry support and precision fires. In a lot of ways this war is really driving things back to basics. That and I suspect the modern IFV is demonstrating that it is not only capable as intimate fire support but in a lot of ways better than armour, especially when combined with unmanned systems and precision fires.

This “where are the Leo2’s/M1s!!” is like a chronic cognitive yeast infection on this thread. Does anyone actually still believe that 200 of either of these platforms would sweep the Russians from the field? If one could get past the integration bill (training, organization and logistics), which is a pretty big hurdle in the middle of a shooting war - “what about the M777 and Pz 2000!?” well integration of a few dozen arty sub-units is one thing, and even with these we know there have been challenges. Integration of a Bdes worth of armour which has to fight in close cooperation with a Ukrainian military organized very differently than the German or US Army is something else entirely. But for arguments sake let’s bypass those issues and say in 6-12 months the UA can fully integrate these systems into their current battle order…ok, so what? Last I checked both the Leo2 and M1 still run on the ground and are vulnerable to mines, which we know the Russians are planting everywhere. They are big, fat, hot concentrations of steel that even the RA ISR will be able to find quickly. The RA still has ATGMs last I checked, and a lot of them. And last I heard all western tanks run on gas…a lot of gas, and need ammo and spare parts. So their logistics system will also be a big target. In fact a lot of what we have heard and seen on tanks in this war makes little sense in terms of doctrine - “indirect fire role 10kms from the FEBA”, how are western tanks going fundamentally change this? I get the sense that some still believe that 200 Leo 2’s or [insert my favourite tank from CM] would end this war by next Tues. Well that position is not supported by the evidence we have seen in how this war is being fought. In fact the cost of a few hundred western tanks could be more than they return on investment at this point. To wit The_Capt’s prescription for western support: - give them all the C4ISR - give them stuff they can use, right now. - prioritize supporting the big three - infantry and infantry support, unmanned systems (both offensive and defensive/counters), and precision fires. - prioritize logistics. - and once you have got all that, then send in limited complete tactical capability packages that the UA can operationalize. So we are talking a western tactical system, top to bottom, that the UA can make best use of in how they are waging this war. One that does not force them to have to shift entirely to a western based doctrinal approach that we have zero evidence would even work. People want this to be a nice and neat western conventional war, over in a week or two…it is not, that ship has sailed. In fact the few western near-peer conventional wars we have had are terrible parallels to try and draw from for this war. This is the real deal - brutal, grinding and drawn out. This does not mean “frozen”, it means attrition is back in play - it is foundational in corrosive warfare. Fast, loose and easy manoeuvre warfare is sitting on the sidelines with a broken nose. We all need to get used to that idea. All war is certainty (a vision of how we want the outcome to be…we cannot lose this), communication (it goes slow…then fast), negotiation (what does victory look like? What does defeat look like?), and sacrifice (what are we willing to pay?).

Not sure negotiating in bad faith is the best play. I mean I agree Russia is in a terrible strategic position but this entire premise ignores the realities of strategic narrative. Further it could end up reinforcing Russian will to continue. All war is sacrifice and negotiation. Sullying one could taint the other.

I think we are taking a lot of notes on this war - https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadian-army-eyeing-new-weapons-in-response-to-lessons-learned-from-ukraine-war-1.6212004 I know I am, and every now and then someone does a still ask me.