The_Capt

I definitely think this is part of it. For example: “raiding” is normally associated with harassment. However precision raiding - called Direct Action in SOF terms - is something very different and normally associated with high value target strikes. If the UA managed to create some sort of hybrid mass precision raiding because western ISR essentially illuminated the battlefield for them then the overall effect is much different. The same goes for indirect fires - harassing fires become “kick-a$$ing” fires because 5 shells are doing what it use to take 50 to accomplish. The math at Kyiv is not adding up. Russian tactical confusion most definitely was a factor initially but these were the best troops the RA had. If it took them a month of getting hammered to “unconfuse” themselves then we are talking about an historic level of incompetence- which the piece directly counters. I can get this in the first 72, and even the first week but at some point RA tactical commanders are going to go “f#ck this sitting on a road and dying noise” and start using all that mass, even if they were sub-optimal with respect to battlefield geometry. They were facing UA TD units (and freaking cadets), peppered with some SF and not enough critical ammo or air cover. Talk about a “what the hell just happened?!” moment. It also does not provide a stable premise as to how the rest of the war is unfolding. Confused Russians and crappy BTG structure does not explain the Donbas, nor does it predict Kharkiv and Kherson unless we make some real “Russia sucks” leaps, which even the authors do not support. My bet is that the missing pieces are bound up in OPSEC that likely transcends the UA itself. My hypothesis is that Russian mass, complete with enablers such as they are, did not and are not working. Russian mass looks a lot like western mass - likely why Gerasimov thought he had parity. UA use of mass did work and is working. The reason why this has happened will likely fill libraries but I think it is at the heart of the military dimension of this conflict.

Definitely wanted to weigh in on this one. So there was an earlier draft out of RUSI but this is likely one of the most comprehensive analysis/assessments of the first 6 months of the war - outside of our little forum here, of course. There is nothing in the summaries and conclusions that does not match a lot of what we have been seeing and saying on this forum - at least in the main. So if you are following this war with us here at BFC, I highly recommend downloading the document and giving it a good going over, you will walk away smarter and with what appears to my eyes a very objective and balanced narrative of the first two phases: Russian invasion & Battle for the Donbas, or perhaps it was really a single strategic phase - the Russian Offensive. However, I would caution that this is a "Preliminary" analysis, it is in the title. It is incomplete, and in at least one or two spots that incompleteness is leading to what I think are incomplete conclusions. Even being likely the best professional analysis we have seen what struck me most about this document is "what it did not say" - there are a lot of gaps here in both scope and scale. I do not think they are deliberate or a result of laziness at all. The authors state up front in the introduction "This report is methodologically problematic" because they could only employ data that was provided to them by the UA General staff. That is not small but that data was filtered - they note this as well - for OPSEC and political sensitivity reasons. Further there is massive amounts of data missing that will be required for a more accurate picture. Data from the other two parties in this war - Russia and The West. A lot of deductions on Russian intent, capability and performance are made here without a lot from those other two data streams, so I am very cautious in accepting gospel at this point. So that said up front I will dig into this with some initial takeaways/observations for any who are interested: Pre-Invasion So this pretty much confirms what we suspected from very early on - Russian had only planned for a 10 day "war". Russia, like many in the west, way over-estimated the relative symmetry and competitive advantage at the outset of this war. Russia, like many western analysts, were using outdated concepts and metrics with respect to mass while at the same time were way over-estimating their own capabilities and readiness. Russian planners were experiencing what has been referred to a progressive unreality, which is a fancy way of saying they built a house of cards on a foundation of shifting sand. Russian "shock and awe" through operational surprise was a flawed concept in the 21st century. It appears the UA was initially somewhat dislocated, the authors even go so far to say that Russian operational surprise was achieved by convincing the UA that the main effort would be the Donbas: "As it became apparent that the Gomel axis was the enemy’s main effort and that another group of forces would strike through Chernihiv, a redeployment of Ukrainian forces was ordered approximately seven hours prior to the invasion. This took considerable time. The result was that many Ukrainian units were not at their assigned defensive positions when the invasion began and, especially on the northern axes, were not in prepared positions." So this highlights a really important missing peice from this whole analysis - the role of western ISR. I have no doubt the authors and UA General Staff scrubbed any mention of this from the data used for many very good reasons. But given the massive pre-war ISR effort by the west and the open-door policy with respect to intel from the US - how on earth did the UA miss the indicators on the Gomel axis? This one sounds very weird to my ears and there is definitely a story here that is going to need unpacking. Was there a failure in western ISR? Was there a breakdown in communications? Did UA planners fall for progressive unreality of their own? It appears that Russia bet the entire farm on "the mighty Russian bear" in a series of increasingly unrealistic assumptions, built upon unrealistic assumptions. Here we hit the other missing peice - what was the actual Russian thinking? We cannot know this from data given - although authors lean in pretty hard, and I am not sure we will ever get a full Russian internal picture. Initial Invasion The big takeaway for me here was the serious disparity in RA C4ISR and catastrophic misalignment in the levels of warfare. There were a lot of systemic targeting problems and the failure to establish operational pre-conditions in favor of operational surprise - destruction of transportation and communications infrastructure. However the indicators of lack of targeting enterprise integration are pretty bold: "A critical weakness of the Russian strike campaign was battle damage assessment. First, the Russian military appears to have presumed that if an action had been ordered and carried out then it had succeeded, unless there was direct evidence to the contrary." This speaks to a fundamentally flawed Russian joint targeting enterprise. Further confirmation bias is pure poison in warfighting. It causes can be so deep that there are examples worse than what we saw in the first days of the war. In Russia's case they seem to be a combination of deep cultural biases combined with a rigid military-political hierarchy where "push back" or critical thinking is simply not a thing. There is a fear in every military that the worst thing that can happen is "the death of formation" - the military organization collapsing into an armed mob. Russia demonstrated in the initial invasion of Ukraine that the only thing worse than taking a military mob to war is taking a military cult. Based on what I can see the failure in the first three days was a combination of very poor planning and preparation, failure to establish operational pre-conditions and way under-estimating the complexity of the operation while at the same time way over-estimating the RA's capabilities. In much more blunt terms, from a military operational point of view it was amateur hour. Russia had not undertaken an offensive operation of this scope, size and scale since the Second World War, and they figured it would be "2014+ a little bit". When the reality is that complexity and friction do not scale linearly - they do so exponentially; Ukraine 2022 was not 2x harder than 2014, it was 2 orders of magnitude (100x) more difficult and clearly the RA was not prepared for it. Battle for Kyiv To my mind this is the biggest blank spot in the document. Even given the RA poor performance in the first 72 hours, they were able to achieve "12:1" force ratios on the Gomel axis towards Kyiv. The authors appear to lay the majority blame for the RA stalling and eventual collapse largely on tactical "confusion". They point out the BTG as a flawed concept - which frankly does not track as it mirrors western Battlegroup and TF constructs very closely. Very few militaries have permanent combined arms units - they are largely modular by design. So when the authors highlight: "In addition to BTGs being units that had not trained together and lacking staff who knew one another, they were also non-uniform in their composition. These deviations did not appear to derive from the tasks they were assigned but instead arose from the equipment available from the units that generated them. Yet, to commanders at higher echelons, the Russian battle management appeared to treat all BTGs as comparable units of action with no tailoring of tasks to their respective capabilities. When military advances are used as a mere demonstration of force this would not have been critical. But once the force tried to transition to fighting, units were now assigned tasks for which they were poorly equipped. As an example, consider the composition of two BTGs, which operated in almost the same area in the east of Ukraine at the end of April 2022. One of them was from the 228th Motor Rifle Regiment of the 90th Armoured Division of the Central Military District (Svatove district): 23 APCs; six tanks; a 122-mm selfpropelled artillery battery; three MLRS BM-21 ‘Grad’; up to 40 vehicles; and about 400 personnel. Another was from the composition of the 57th Motor Rifle Brigade of the 5th Army of the Eastern Military District (Rubizhne district): more than 30 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs); 14 tanks; a 122-mm self-propelled artillery battery; a 152-mm self-propelled artillery battery; a MLRS BM-21 ‘Grad’ battery; up to 60 vehicles; and about 800 personnel." So I find this confusing and lacking. So how were the 228th MRR and 57th MRB BTG mis-employed? It alludes to higher level RA commanders treating all BTGs as uniform and failure to "task tailor" and I really want to see the evidence of this. The lack of uniformity is very common throughout modern militaries all over the place. When I look at these two BTGs I see one "light" and one "heavy" - so what? How was the 228th asked to do a job it was not capable of? Again, what is really missing here is "what killed the RA north of Kyiv" because tactical confusion was very likely a contributing factor but the UA took on an opponent with a 12:1 force ration advantage and that opponent pulled out a month later in tatters. A lot of themes here to unpack - zombie orders, complete lack of operational/tactical C2 integration, capability misalignment and logistical issues (only alluded to). But while all of this definitely contributes to operational system strain - it does not blow up the amount of hardware we saw unfold on Oryx. From my read the UA held off a 12:1 force overmatch with a couple artillery brigades, SOF and ad hoc TD units - who "did not have enough ATGMs to really make a difference anyway?" So the RA drove towards Kyiv - its main effort - in a confused and rambling fashion. Sat on the roads in "tactical confusion" and lack of air superiority for a month while the UA killed them like freakin buffalo, largely with indirect fire from two formations? Huh? So here I think we need a lot more depth. How many RA vehicles were killed by indirect fire and how much indirect fire? How was that indirect fire targeted? Where was the RA c-battery: did the RA really just sit there and let UA artillery hammer them without responsing? How many vehicles were killed by those ATGMs? [aside: I am pretty confused by the ATGM assessment to be honest. The UA did not have enough ATGW to make a difference: "The tactical employment of ATGWs by the UAF prior to the conflict was largely aimed at fixing or blunting enemy armoured manoeuvre and for use in raiding by light forces because of the speed with which units with these systems could displace. There were too few missiles, however, for these to be the primary means of attriting enemy forces." Ok, well earlier they note that the UA had purchased close to 20,000 soviet-style and homemade ATGMs after 2014. to which they received about 3000 Javelins and NLAWs. So what did all that do to "attirting" enemy forces? What was the effect of "raiding" on an already confused RA. What was the role of integration of those light forces and indirect fires.?] On the Battle of Kyiv I am left with far more questions than answers, and a whole lot here is still not adding up. Again, missing is the role western ISR support played. RA troops broad casting in "the clear" is not great but it cannot explain the level of precision lethality to effectively cold-stop a military system with the kind of over-match the RA had. If western space-based ISR was fully engaged the fact that the RA used cellphones is not why they died - it was because they could be seen from space in real time. While the RA clearly lacked the same. Tanks? Critical and the UA had lots...but mostly for indirect fire....WTF?! There are so many weird sounds with respect to military mass coming out of all this it is starting to sound like a piano being fed into a woodchipper to me. EW and UAS - wow. Ok, so clearly this is what the environment looks like with UAS being very effectively countered. This is not open skies, the RA has been knocking these things down like crazy and yet it has not really helped them as UA unmanned is still being used to great effect. And again, EW is going to do nothing against higher altitude and space-based systems. Battle for the Donbas Really no surprises here - we did see a lot of this here on the forum. The political spin on why the UA did not simply pull out and stayed and fought was very interesting - i.e. war crimes in occupied areas effect. The density of RA fires and essentially human wave attacks really highlight something else with respect to mass - the unbearable weight requirement. So in order for the RA to achieve enough overmatch they had to concentrate so much that mobility was basically sacrificed. They appear the limiting factor on the rates of advance in the Donbas because moving all those guns with their ammo could not be done quickly. This appears to be what "dumb mass" risks on the modern battlefield. I am stumped however, on why the RA never achieved breakthrough. The massive sacrifices of the UA cannot be understated here but was that the thin blue and yellow line that held off all that weight? Or was there something else going on to explain why after literally annihilating ground with HE, the RA was never able to breakthrough and manoeuvre? What was the comparative UA density in these areas? After this I am getting the sense that the Donbas was a modern day version of Verdun as the RA broke itself further for very little gain. The damage to the UA and how much it was able to push-back is incomplete, so the nature of how this contest unfolded is unclear. What we do know is that the RA lost the offensive after Donbas, and the UA picked it up. Conclusions Despite leaning in hard and taking risks in some parts of this assessment - e.g the inner working of the RA. The authors are actually pretty cautious their conclusions. These are all sound but my take away is, again, something happened to military mass in this war. "No Sanctuary" and "Disperse or Die" are basically the same point - the traditional use of mass is beyond challenged, it has proven fatal to the RA. I am very interested on how the UA employed dispersion throughout this war, particularly on the offensive. "Fighting for the Right to Precision" is very interesting, and I think hints at the "cloud-based warfare" we have been tossing around: however, it also lacks the effects of western space based ISR. I am convinced that fighting for the right of precision will extend into space and cyber (which gets mentioned exactly twice in the entire document). Further as unmanned systems get smarter I am more convinced that "Fighting through Precision" is the emerging theme. For example I have used the term "anti-mass" a few times. This appears to be a combination of speed and precision combined to create a pressure wave of smart-attrition to systematically deconstruct an opponents operational system. Further precision is becoming a key component in survivability. The document alludes to this: "Precision is not only vastly more efficient in the effects it delivers but also allows the force to reduce its logistics tail and thereby makes it more survivable. Precision weapons, however, are scarce and can be defeated by EW ." I am left wondering what happens when precision weapons are no longer scarce and ISR clouds that go from sub-surface to space are created that cannot be defeated by EW? Finally the "significant slack capacity" point is at odds with precision, or perhaps they are mutually supporting in reality. Precision really means very high efficiency combined with effectiveness. So one does not need massive amounts of dumb war stocks, but one may need massive amounts of smart-war stocks because they are now on the critical path. I do not think either side in this war has fully expressed what mass-precision looks like but the UA is coming damned close. The_Capt's axiom update: Mass beats isolation, connected precision beat mass, integrated massed precision beats everything. Re-thinking War I am coming to a growing sense that warfare is in need of a serious rethink. We have principles and foundations that remain unchanged - e.g. selection and maint of the aim, morale, attrition. But we have others that are looking more and more as though they are in the wind - surprise, manoeuvre, concentration of mass. I think we need to start looking through different lens's and frameworks, as many of our old ones are challenged. Our planning processes and how we make assumptions, how we define "decision" and "victory". How we think about the translation of military power - to capability - to effect - to decisions and outcomes. How we think about capability itself. To my mind this is a good thing, if we do it ahead of evolution. Whether or not we are in a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is an entirely different question. Many thought we were in the 90s and early 00's but it kind of petered out. I suspect RMAs take longer than a couple decades to culminate so we could very well be in the middle of one; however, it is very hard to say without more evidence. I can only say the best course is to keep watching carefully, critically and continuously as you can. For me the progress of this war has been both terrible, wasteful and simply tragic. It has also been professionally mesmerizing - the entire point of mastery of warfare is so you do not have to fight one, or if you do it is short and sharp as possible. The lessons from this war all point to reinforcing the primacy of this idea.

Yes.

Here is one possible answer - repurposing: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/britain-says-russia-likely-removing-nuclear-warheads-missiles-firing-ukraine-2022-11-26/

It is supposed to be the Jedi Academy, or at least that is how the Canadian Army sells it. I never attended - of course the Canadian Army and I parted ways over a decade ago. At some point the debate became ecclesiastical-like because reality has left the building in that video.

US politics aside. How on earth are people still listening to this guy after 9 months of an almost continuous steady stream of “being wrong”?! I mean I have been tracking Macgregor since the very early days and by my count Ukraine has collapsed in this war about a half a dozen times according to him. I get that he is telling some people what they want to hear and lord knows one political party or the other could not possibly getting a win, but at some point one has to go - “hey didn’t he say the Russians won by now?” I am absolutely baffled that anyone is listening to an former military officer whose analysis and predictions have been proven very wrong, repeatedly. As a professional military officer I am left wonder if he and I are watching the same war. “Russia is holding back?” Holding back what?! And “for what?” The loss count is getting to modern army crippling levels- when your losses are approaching Iraqi standards and you are constantly losing ground to show for it…well you get my point. I mean we all get that there is “spinning” but this is outright lying - the guy is a SAMS grad FFS.

He is still seeing this war through a western lens. He makes a lot of very good points, however, appears stuck on “winning through manoeuvre”, which we have seen little of in the prosecution of this war. A deliberate assault - frankly, I disagree with him here, as the RA proved back this spring the opposed water xing is probably harder - to break through and then exploit is employing western biased metrics. Corrosive warfare does not do this, or at least it is not on the critical path. As we saw in quick time at Kharkiv and slower time at Kherson, the aim is to employ precision strike to erode an opponent to the point their operational system fails. This has happened three times to the RA - northern advances in Ph I, Kharkiv and Kherson. This was all done by merciless corrosion until the RA failed and was forced to withdraw, while taking casualties on high value systems they cannot replace. South and east of Kherson will be the same story. If the UA can continue to erode RA logistics, ISR and longe range fires - with the added pressure of the weather, the RA system will likely buckle again. They can dig all the trenches they want, once the ammo, food and ability to rotate troops all cease it is simply a matter of time. Why the UA would want to risk valuable assets and people on reckless direct assaults the make no sense? Infiltrate-Isolate-Eliminate-Repeat : Fog eating snow but now with winter on their side it is “fog eating Russian soldier-popsicles”. Fundamentally the good general is describing the employment of fast-mass to beat defensive mass which is exactly what our dogma…er, “doctrine” says. The UA has been employing anti-mass far more effectively on both defence and offence - which links back to that Finnish approach post. It would appear that it is anti-mass’s time to shine

Oh that is very good. Mirrors a lot of what we have seen throughout this war. I think the major western powers, primarily the west have viewed this as the "poor mans warfare". However, clearly advances in modern technology have done something fundamental here. This sounds a lot like the corrosive-dispersed defense we have seen from the UA throughout; however, they did not need an archipelago or wicked terrain to tie it together. Even the Finnish approach to air power is mirrored here and sounds a lot like "parity-through-denial" the UA also seems to be able to practice. What is really interesting is that the UA has demonstrated twice that one can execute a form of corrosive offence. It looks different from traditional manoeuvre offensives but it clearly works. I think the entire thing lines up with high-speed precise attrition (= corrosion) where you are able to effective attrit key connectors and nodes in an opponents operational system faster then they can replace them.

This is pretty accurate; however, I would place logistics as the first concern . Individual training, equipment and discipline are very important in cold weather - I once had a solider get trench foot in 3 days because he slept with his boots on, the medics were flabbergasted. I reamed out this Sgt because making sure troops did it right was his job. Logistics are the critical path because the best trained and equipped troops are still going to time expire much faster in these conditions compared to summer. People basically become like batteries, you need to continuously switch them out. Continuous troop/unit rotations - slower on defence, faster on offence - are required in order to rest and refit more often. This is a significant logistical (“sustainment” is the formal term) challenge in the area of force management. Not just physically rotating troops but getting them back to warm/dry, replacing clothing and equipment, and medical. Given the ranges and ISR dynamic - for the RA this is very bad news as troops will need to be rotated well back, like out of HIMARs range. The UA will need to worry about artillery ranges. The next big challenge is C2/operational integrity. Continuously rotating units means that you are continuously re-integrating them in and out of operations - this is really why operations tend to slow down. So a unit is pulled out to warm up/refit for a few days and then will likely be put in somewhere else on the line and have to be reintroduced to that area. It takes time for troops to get to know what is going on, getting to know who they are facing, pattern of life etc. Or you could leave units in place but then they are only ever at 50% strength because half the unit is back warming up - you then need to double unit densities to sustain force levels. This makes unit reintegration much easier but really takes away formation flexibility and agility because you only have half your force effective at a given time. You could try 1/3 rotations, but those come at an attrition cost as the 2/3rd on the line stay in place longer. So the real friction points in cold weather are logistics, C2 and capacity. In reality one can think of the battlefield as a set of negative environmental pressures on a human-based organization trying to get something done. Cold weather is a major multiplier of those pressures. Comparing the two sides and I also suspect the UA has advantage, they have demonstrated much better logistics and C2; however, they are likely hurting in capacity. RA has capacity (technically) but it’s C2 and logistics have been shown as very poor. Once the RA capacity starts to fail, their whole system collapses - we have seen it three times now. The question really is - how much can the UA influence and exploit the RA system failures while under a negative environmental pressure as well?

Add continuous harassing indirect fire, some wounds that go untreated due to lack of medical support and the odd tac UAV pooping HE on your head. I have avoided predictions in this war but I will make one here - the RA is really screwed this winter. Their logistics issues are going to turn into stuff like disease and cold injuries in the winter that their medical system will not be able to deal with. Troops are going to be faced with lighting fires or freezing to death so ISR is going to light them up. Looking at the weather in Kherson for example - https://weatherspark.com/y/97401/Average-Weather-in-Kherson-Ukraine-Year-Round And you have the worst possible conditions - cold enough to freeze you to death but also warm enough to get you wet - and then freeze you to death. Winter warfare is hard - like “wishing you were dead” hard. It is ridiculous without proper logistical support and regular troop rotations. Fog eating snow might just turn into ice shattering the RA and the UA driving over their frozen corpses. If the RA has a division of elite Siberian troops left in the pantry, now would be the time to use them.

One has to wonder how bad the out-of-battle rate the RA is suffering right now.

Oh my that is the real pain right there. And there is nowhere to go but down.

Vocabulary!!!

So if those little jaundice emoji bastards are the ushers to illiterate hell, autocorrect is operating the film projector. Your egregious child abuse experience pales in comparison to the deep shame I am feeling that I dropped an “ed” - some may also notice that I sometimes drop “s”s, not sure why. Likely old stubby fingers on an iPad keyboard. Regardless the point stands. If ”danfrodo” (seriously sounds like the hobbit who mans the front desk at the DMV) had simply prefaced his post with - “Sardonically speaking…” then he would be able to avoid the steady slide into the two finger texting hell all human communication is doomed to become.

Wow that took a hard left turn from your emoticon heresy. Personally I think humans stand poised between the Hobbesian and Rousseau -ian (?) we are able to swing to either pole based on a set of really complicated factors. However when threats become stark and existential, and we are given license I think we have a default setting that is pretty savage. The famously quoted statistic from WW2 is not without pushback : https://www.historynet.com/men-against-fire-how-many-soldiers-fired-weapons-vietnam-war/. And from experience the problem in a firefight is to get the troops to slow down and exercise fire discipline rather than all opening up at once - I saw little aversion to violence but that is just me. Regardless pre-civilization research is showing that we were in fact quite violent (see Lawrence Keeley’s work) with something like 60+ percent of all adult males experiencing human violence and/or death based on wound evidence. And this jives with other primate behaviours which can be extremely violent - Azar Gat has some interesting analysis of this as monkeys go to war too. So that is the bad news - killing in fear appears very much baked into us as a species. The good news is that we have worked very hard at social frameworks to try and control and limit that reflex. The reason is not really all that altruistic as one cannot stick 20000 chimpanzees into a hockey stadium but you can with humans…because social frameworks. To your point, it is very much a slope. In my experience it becomes normal pretty fast even coming from a peace loving society. We employ military discipline and culture to keep it from getting out of control and taking the effectiveness of a cohesive fighting unit with it. As to how this applies to the common Russian soldier is really unknown - I have no doubt there are strong opinions (some have been repeatedly expressed here ) but I am not sure how accepting Russian society is of brutality in war and then how that translates to the brutality of its soldiers. My sense is that it is definitely a factor - the average Russian soldier is likely on a less steep slope than say a US one. But how much have we seen is a lack of discipline and training, and how much is baked in? My experience is that there is a dark animal in all of us - what may differ is what it takes for that animal to see daylight. Some is societal macro and micro, and some is just individual wiring I suspect. In time we may evolve out that darkness, or maybe we can better control it - cool science fiction idea there…but I think it has been done.

Dear lord, that post pre-dates me and harkens back to a time when iridium was a tonic to ward of “evil humours” and we thought smoking without seatbelts in a car the height of class - for the love of gawd Harry Potter’s testicles had not dropped yet. I challenge your magic math at a fundamental level. Blind people somehow communicate without visual cues and the written word has many ways to “emote” without this little bobble-headed cancers….it is call vocabulary. Pah! And Pish-Posh I say.

Emjois are the Devil’s work and future generations will look upon them in shame. I would rather a thousand misunderstandings than suffer the corrosive effect of those damnable little cartoons on the written word. They are the Peng Thread of modern communication and I feel so dirty that I even I have fallen under their insipid little siren song in my weaker moments. They have the clear golden tones of a Taylor Swift song, complete with mind earwig effect that works its way into your cerebral cortex in order to erase you, and put a vapid empty flesh-vessel in your place. If religion was the opiate of the masses in previous centuries the Church of those little round headed dead-eyed bastards is designed to keep us asleep far better than the Holy Trinity ever could.

Too soon man, too soon. I am not sure jokes that end in "Russia was the victim all along" & "this is due to Ukrainian perfidy" are ready for prime time just yet. After a few days of "lets all stare and debate war crimes" kinda took the shine off for me. I guess I missed the punchline...my bad. Apologies all around.

Yes, your weird version of the holiday is bound to drive anyone nuts. I mean seriously...on a Thurs? I mean if you want a super-weekend just do Fri and Mon like a proper Catholic Easter and be done with it.

Dude, seriously take a day off for your mental health. You are starting to take some is this to what looks like an unhealthy level.* I mean a half dozen RA soldiers may have gotten clipped during a possible-but-yet-to-be-investigated unrighteous shoot - and suddenly Steve himself is becoming a Russian appeaser?! Like, seriously point to the sky for me because you sound like you are in a tailspin. *Edit - unless you were joking? Hard to tell to be honest.

Well violence against the Other is the purpose of almost every military, it is the form, structure and regulations of that violence that is the issue. While it is clearly possible for a social culture framework to be constructed to be supportive of brutal violence against Others - history is literally filled with such examples, I am not sure as to what level it exists within Russia itself. There has been historical evidence (eg mass rape in occupied Germany) and contemporary evidence. However there is also counter-evidence such as mass exodus, particularly of the highly educated. Further as has been expounded upon here on this forum Russian society is not homogeneous, so we may have a social dynamic as acceptable with some sections but less so in others. I am also pretty sure that few are capable of an objective analysis of Russian society given the events of the last 8 month - internally or externally. It is likely going to need further study once the war is over. As to the effects of war crimes on the RA, I still argue the social dimension is unknown. Obviously Russia is not some blissful peace loving nation and now it’s troops have gone all medieval. However, Russian society as a whole is likely also not employing 10th century calculus to the problem either or we would be seeing much worse. From a military dimension the effects of unregulated war crimes are likely akin to corruption itself, cumulative. The logic of corruption gets pretty “anti-cohesive” pretty fast - “well the Col is screwing the Gen, so we can screw him over too”. War crimes and overt brutality can be just as corrosive if they are pursued for individual interests over collective interests outside of a structured framework. Beyond the question of military cohesion, war crimes are also highly counter productive in accomplishing military objectives themselves. The damage in the larger justifying-war narratives, the increased resistance effect on an opponent, waste of resources and the severe hit to credibility for any future negotiations is incredibly damaging to actually winning a war. In this war they also translate directly into western support, and as upside down as the political level is in Russia they realize this as demonstrated by the ridiculous denial efforts. No matter how hard it tries Russia cannot exist in its own bubble in 2022, and they know it. In the end I suspect the overall effect of war criminality within the RA has not been a net positive - how much is a big unknown. Externally their behaviour has been a complete disaster. We are talking a UNSC member, P5 and G20 continually violating international laws of war - on a near daily basis. A few anomalies are tolerated, so long as efforts are demonstrated to correct - what we are seeing from the RA in Ukraine is going to cost Russia dearly for decades. I suspect they will be on the bench next to North Korea for at least a couple generations at this rate - if they do not simply fall apart.

Oh my that is one deep question. Been thinking about it and its not a crazy hypothesis but I am still not sure it stands up. Military Dimension First off there have historically been militaries that have done horrendous things we would label as war crimes and they demonstrated high levels of discipline and cohesion. Most are pre-modern era but the Japanese Army in China in the 30s springs to mind. Brutal actions from the worst parts of humanity but still highly disciplined and highly cohesive. For most militaries whose way of way leans this way they have applied structure to their chaos. Looting, rape and civilian murder we planned phases of an operation, normally as an incentive or to allow the boys to “let off steam”. Once they got it out of their systems, order was re-established and discipline re-exerted. The primary reason for this is to keep primacy of collective interests over individual interests. Recall that whole macro - micro discussion and orientation? It centres on the idea that organic micro-social structures are in tension with macro social structures. Well micro orientation can be a good or bad thing to military organization - eg the home fires. However it can also be toxic - individual survival calculus and interests driven by other pressures. So looting, rape and recreational murder can quickly spiral out of control and erode the larger military’s ability to sustain structure….unless it is regulated within it. Does the Russian military do this? Very hard to tell. There appears to be some evidence of systemic brutality, no doubt; however, there is a lot of “ad hoc” looking activity as well. Troops abandoning fighting vehicles but hanging onto the washing machines is not a sign of structured brutality - more poor discipline and lack of leadership even in commission of war crimes. So what? Well unless the RA can structure this sort of violence the corrosive effects is going to add up. Soldiers getting drunk, looting, raping and murdering is not a good thing if it occurs out of the control of the military hierarchy - crazy but true. It is a matter of time that soldiers who are living like this create sub-tribes and quickly fall apart as cohesive units. The question remains how much is under control and how much is just poor discipline and control? Very hard to tell from evidence we can see. Social Dimension War is a lot more than an extension of policy. It is an extension of the people who wage it on deep social - cultural, cognitive and conative - levels. So if a military is adopting a way of war that includes warcrimes in a systemic way, there is normally a level of social norms that support this. Here the evidence is a lot less definitive - I am sure someone will come along shortly and tell us that all Russians eat babies while clog dancing on puppies but internally they are pretty middle of the road as far as violent crime: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/violent-crime-rates-by-country These numbers do not speak to a society that, internally at least, is accepting of high levels of violence. Now this is only one indication and I am willing to bet Japanese crime rate in the 30s we’re very low - it was an orderly society. Did Japanese society endorse brutality for “others” outside of Japan - history suggests “yes”. So What? Well if the RA is acting outside accepted Russian societal norms then it is clear it’s soldiers are on a very slippery slope away from their own people. This speaks to carcinogenic effects of internal military tribal societies that are alienated from both their own military and people - that is not good and clear evidence of structural failure. If Russian soldiers are acting aligned with Russian accepted social norms towards war, then war crimes may very well have less of a corrosive effect from a societal point of view. Now there have been all sorts of social media sound bites of Russian phone calls etc but these are not a real social study of Russian culture and its tolerance of brutality in war. So in the end the question is too big to answer here. I suspect that war crimes are eroding the RA to some extent. Largely because there appears to be a lot less structure and organization in execution and more ad hoc bottom up chaos in the entire RA structure. I do not think we are even capable of objectively assessing Russian society at this point, so we can put that aside. Finally as to RA collapse. I argue that is is happening in front of us right now. It has been collapsing since at least this summer broadly and suffered local collapses since the end of March. The evidence is pretty damning and continues to grow steadily. RA fighting capability has eroded significantly as a result, to the point most found the Kherson withdrawal somewhat surprising. The effects of war crimes and their role in that collapse is an excellent question but I suspect we will not really know for some time.

Absolute peace on this. I have stated repeatedly that this is a single incident that is in need of a thorough investigation...and then and only then can a determination of a war crime on either side be be made and charges laid for due legal process. Nor is this an indicator of wider UA behaviour as far as we have seen. There was that one kneecapping incident - and I have no doubt there have been others because: scared/angry/tired kids + ammunition = **** happens. So there is not inclination to blow this out of proportion here. However, what is important is that the UA and Ukraine are seen and recognized as doing the investigation and follow up, as well as re-tightening rules of engagement etc. That way they demonstrate that they are better than the RA by leaps and bounds. Further, entry into NATO after this war is over will no doubt require closing these cases regardless. Finally, why make Russia's life easier? Gawd knows what people like Col Macgregor are going to to with this in those echo chambers out there. Last thing Ukraine needs to question marks on their way of warfare from people already tired of hearing of this war, and losing interest in paying for it in the middle of a recession. As Steve said - the second the west cannot tell the difference between Ukrainian and Russian behaviors, clearly, the whole damn gig is at risk. And then there is this. I think it is very fair to say that we here on this forum and thread are very pro-Ukrainian. We have been pushing back against the "Ukraine is doomed" from Day One largely based on tactical observation from the ground. But we should not be blindly pro-Ukrainian, which frankly appears to be the direction some people want to go, and I for one do not support it in the least. This is supposed to be a place where military experts, enthusiast and historical nerds can get together and observe this war through an objective lens and conduct collective analysis. The second we jump on the "Ukraine can do no wrong" and "Lulz Russia always sux because Russia" train (despite evidence to the contrary), we will lose any objectivity we have. The second we start supporting - even passively - some of the frankly immensely stupid extremist ideas floating around e.g. demonizing every Russian man, woman and child, lobbying for cultural genocide or worse, or some bizarre "war crimes are just ok, well ours are..." narratives, then we start the steady slide into a true internet cesspool, which frankly is beneath us all.

Ok, let me hit this on the head one last time because it is going to a really bad place. And I totally get the sentiment but we need to be absolutely clear on this point - being the 'good guys' and acting like a modern professional military means all the time, no matter what. No days off, no "revenge breaks" and definitely no "hey they are doing it." Only a combat veteran of Afghanistan or Iraq can describe just how badly we wanted to call in an A10 and wipe out an entire grid square after one of your own goes home in a box. Or retaliate when the insurgents did some really dark sh#t. But that ain't the gig, ever. The single biggest point civilians do not get about war is that 'killing' is not the hard part - the hard part is 'to not keep on killing'. We clipped guys for holding a cellphone in the wrong place for too long, chewed up teenagers digging hole in roads, and a hammered into meat a few farmers dumb enough to stick around. We did it and high-fived when we dropped them. We slept soundly that night and never thought twice about doing it the next day. But we never let that out of the professional box we kept it in - the second we did, and could no longer tell which way was up - even when the other team was basically operating on Genghis Khan ROEs - we would stop being soldiers and become something else. And then the whole thing starts to unravel. The RA and Russia will pay for their actions for decades. War crimes are one of the key indicators that the RA is in freefall and not a coherent fighting force - military discipline has fallen apart on a wide scale, and they are reaping that field this fall. But we beat them by being better than they are, forever.