The_Capt

Its right up there with "be more manoeuvre-y!" and use mission command. We in western militaries have not been in a fight like this since maybe Korea. One cannot manoeuvre across obstacle belts kms deep. This is a straight up grudge attritional match until breakthrough. I am sure the UA has made mistakes but this continual stream of "well if you just did it like us" nonsense is both arrogant and completely disconnected from realities they are facing on the ground. UAS are integral to recon and SA building now. This would be like advocating to "rely on radios less" in this environment. The second I read that I thought that this was either some very oblivious US government hack, or a misinformation campaign.

That rings true. Not sure if every Ukrainian soldier receiving training feels this way but there is some truth to what this is saying. Last time we trained for this sort of war would have been in the early 90s. Last time anyone saw one like it would have been mid-late 90s. Most western troops of the last 20 years are “unshelled” by this wars standards. The Ukrainian recruits really need the old Cold War training we used to do but there are damned few left in service who remember it. I am pretty sure western troops are swinging their training back towards peer conventional conflict but it is largely theoretical for western forces at this point.

Like to see what twit suggested “stop using UAS so much”. Right, much better to send men forward to die while being spotted by the other sides UAS.

This is what happens when I leave you guys unsupervised. We were moving most of Aug…god I hate moving.

Damn is this thread still going strong? A real tactics and warfare thread? The anti-Peng? Well done guys.

You shut your mouth! Super sexy…almost too sexy. All covered in dirt and bad manners.

Poor Priggy - too crazy for Coup Town, too much coup in him for Crazy Town. Like a falling star he fell to earth after shining ever so brightly, and having a wing blown off. My sense is that although popular in some circles, I don't think he is going to become the martyr for a movement. Unless said movement is already well on its way and simply wants to slap his mug on the T-shirts. Keep aiming for the bushes Priggy, and say hi to Lucifer for us all.

Looking more and more like Tokmak is the overall operational objective for this years offensive.

This is where the “it will be fine camp” are sucking and blowing at the same time. “All the bad people will leave back to Russia, the locals will do nothing but we will need to hunt down collaborators before they try to get us killed again”. I do not disagree with you or Haiduk in the least. The stakes here are very high. Collaborators can become the skeleton of an insurgency and they will try and kill you. The problem is finding them without alienating or pushing larger groups of the population into a situation where they see violence as the only way out. It takes precision. These situations always go badly. Neighbours snitch before they can be snitched on. People get mis-identified. People take the law into their own hands. All of that can turn very ugly very quickly. This will take a masterful steady hand and an intelligence architecture for the ages. It may take outside the box thinking like amnesty for low low level offenders to catch the big fish. Or accepting a few big fish to get the rest.

I cannot express enough that I hope you are right. And I totally respect your identity and citizenship. If there is any justice left in the world Crimea will be liberated - let me be clear on all of that. It is human: error, fear, biases, ignorance, hatred and greed that I point out as major concerns on post conflict…and not just for the Ukrainians themselves. The conditions for things going badly and organized resistance/insurgency exist in Crimea and the Donbas. They did before the 2014, they do now. A major weakness of this thread is to put Ukrainians on an unfair pedestal. The defence and retaking of their homeland is one for the history books but they are still human beings and are just as capable of losing the post-conflict bubble as anyone else. The points of failure have already been outlined. Loss of property, deportation, revenge killings/swift justice, collaborators. All of that will be done within a very large population overseen by a Ukrainian military who is very pissed off. An idea would be to bring in international security forces to assist but that comes with its own issues. Regardless, I think this topic has been flogged enough. I have provided my analysis and assessment, everyone can take it or leave it as they wish. Hopefully it does get people thinking about post-war and the challenges we are likely going to face.

Well as Haiduk has already mentioned, revenge killing do happen and are very likely to continue. Plus we are comparing areas that were occupied for about 6 months to a region that has been under Russian rule for nearly a decade - untangling that mess is going to pretty brutal. I honestly hope and expect that official government process will be done in accordance with the law but these are slippery slopes for all the reasons our friends in Ukraine have noted. Finding “collaborators” on the scope and scale of the Crimea or entire Donbas is going to be messy no doubt about it. If that messy starts to look like oppression we are back to feeding fuel into resistance. I honestly do not understand what it is about Westerners and their firm belief that rule of law will triumph. We keep running headlong into situations completely missing the fact that war and conflict are deeply personal and build resentment that last generations. How many interventions where we don’t get the bloody parades or locals running into our arms do we need to experience? How many crappy civil wars that are never really settled and conditions for re-emergence are always just under the surface do we need to see? War is not about military units firing at each other and the rules we try to throw over that. It is about entire societies killing each other. It is deeply personal and tends to unravel the best intentions.

Now there is something I never thought to ask, what is the winter warfare capability of the UA right now?

That statement alone sends shiver up the spine. And I know you damn well mean it, you have every right to…but, shivers.

Pretty good summation but there are other points on the spectrum. We could see levels of fragmentation as power players see opportunity of risk as things unravel. Hanging the entire thing on Russian (or any other human collective) apathy is a gross oversimplification of the situation in my opinion. People live in bubbles while the rest of the world spins around them. They will take an enormous amount of repression and chaos, so long as their bed is not burning when they try to sleep at night. They can be sheep…right up to the point they are not. No one can predict when or where that point will be. I spent a lot of time with political soothsayers and witch doctors in 2014 and no one predicted the Arab Spring. The conditions for a mass movement had been around for years, decades. Many were right in it being inevitable, but when and where matter a lot, and no one was able to predict that. Same goes for Russia. The conditions will be present (are present) within its current society for a tipping point towards serious collapse. Will a massive loss in Ukraine do it? I personally do not believe anyone who says definitively in either direction. In reality it is a possible outcome, probably the most dangerous. So what? Well you plan for it and be ready to try and head it off. You mitigate and try and stay ahead of that reality but at the same time do not 1) let it hijack all your thinking or 2) dismiss it out of hand because it is “too hard”. This is strategy, threading needles and keeping diametrically opposed outcomes in balance while they try to fly apart.

Because these things are always messy as hell. Trying to find the “good ones” in these sorts of situations is always messy. Totally hypothetical, what if he claims to have lived in Crimea before 2014 but can’t prove it? Once stuff starts blowing up and burning you could have thousands in this position. And then there are Russians who try and fake their way into Crimea (especially if Russia is in such a bad state and they want to keep their homes), what proof will they have and how does one spot the fakes? This is before trying to figure out who the 15% of the population prior to 2014 who were on the Russian agenda. “All deals are legally void”, is exactly what some are going to see as repression “ie taking my house”, especially if how people are selected as “good” or “bad” is flawed, and it will be. People always start to turn on each other when it gets like this. Post conflict is almost always one of the toughest stages to manage. Why? Because we end up trying to fix human micro-social space with bureaucracy and policy. Re-integration has been done well but more likely it will be messy, “how messy?” remains the core question. There will need to be an entire DDR effort along with massive reconstruction. When do the Donbas and Crimea get to vote again? You are not going to figure out good from bad “Crimeans” over a weekend.

If Russia totally collapses, we have a whole other set of problems than a Crimean or Donbas insurgency. A potential Russian civil war for starters. One that will not stay nicely in Russian borders. Then any group with a grudge can warband up and do dirty anywhere.

You realize that a few pages back people here were calling for your deportation in the event of a liberation? This is the mess. You clearly are not a pro-Russian sympathizer but in the wrong circumstances unless you can prove Ukrainian citizenship and loyalty you could be on a boat out based on some of the rhetoric being thrown around here. The cause emerges out of situations just like this. Anyway as I said before let’s honestly hope it does not come to this. Hopefully people will be integrated smoothly and embrace peace. It is when the honeymoon period ends that things may get weird. For the record I am talking insurgency here, not partisan resistance during the war. That I strongly suspect is off the table. I am talking 6 months to a year after the war and something does not go right and Russia is still able to make trouble…because they will if they can. And in all sincerity, take care of yourself.

Well accept for the part where is does not really matter what two old guys said on a wargaming forum. I damn well hope an insurgency does not occur and that Crimea can be retaken slamming the door shut on Russian meddling forever. If Russia has totally collapse to do this, well we have a whole new set of problems to deal with. We will be able to see pretty clearly if the right counters were put in place, having an entire government department built and ready to go for reintegration is a pretty good start. Soft hands and incentivizing the liberated populations is another good route to go. Like most professional military we hope and pray to be wrong before a crisis starts, in that is never starts. But I simple cannot see a way out of this without a lot of risks and conditions for things to go sideways…we will have to see.

Ok, let’s use your facts then. At 15% of the local population actively supporting annexation that is around 330,000 who appears to be solidly in the pro-Russian camp…in 2014. It is a major leap of logic to assume that the dynamics of 2014 apply ten years later but after ten years of Russian rule it is safe bet that the area was “Russified” pretty intensely. And then there is the very awkward question of “how much civil resistance did the Russian’s see when they took over the entire region?” This is also a major indicator you are skipping over. Here is the point most people miss on insurgencies, and you are doing it here as well - they are very often if not always a very small minority of the population. If all 2.2 million Crimeans decide “nope” and take up active or violent resistance then Ukraine will not take back Crimea. However, as you note and here I do agree, this is very unlikely. But they don’t have to. The majority of civilians need only stay neutral or play both sides - here the nearly 68 percent who identify as Russia come into play. A fraction of a fraction of the 15% who actively were onside need only take up arms and be supported by an outside power for this to constitute a major insurgency. Say only 33,000 Crimeans get really riled up, hidden amongst a neutral population that really have no love or loyalty to either side, you have the conditions right there for a decades long problem. It will be very much in Russia’s interest to make that happen, which is another major factor. ”Crap happens plan for the worst”. Really? Ok, once again let’s review the key factors that provide the fuel for insurgents, all that “happening crap” that we teach a joint war colleges: - A cause. Very often tied to identity, ethnicity or religion (often all three) and a belief in an idea of a political framework other than the one they are living under. In simpler terms a certainty. Is there a population in either of the occupied regions who are likely to have “a cause”? Well 2014-2023 says “likely”. https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/conflict-ukraines-donbas-visual-explainer - Failure in mechanism of change/representation. Re-integration of these regions is going to be dicey in the extreme as it will mean re-enfranchisement of potentially hostile citizenry into a democratic process. This was a major flash point in the Donbas pre-2014, perceived lack of representation and failures in representative governance.https://www.ponarseurasia.org/wp-content/uploads/attachments/Pepm351_Kudelia_Sept2014.pdf. This situation boxes some people in to the point that violent resistance is the only agent of change. So is there likely to be a portion of the Crimean population that is at risk of feeling dis-enfranchised after liberation? Are they going to feel boxed in? - Weak governance. This is an area you have already admitted is a risk and frankly it will become a key battleground post-conflict. If governance slips, corruption and old habits come into play then popular sentiment can swing pretty fast. Insurgencies thrive on poor governance and inequities, which they link immediately to their cause as the solutions for. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraines-choice-corruption-or-growth/ - Popular support. This does not need to be active support, it can simply be passive. Both you and our Ukrainian posters point to largely “neutral populace in these regions”, that is more than enough to set conditions for effective insurgencies. They will play that neutrality and use money and other incentives to create transactional networks that allow them freedom of movement. The other viable tactic is effectively staging over reaction from the “liberators” in order to push neutrality in their direction. As has already been covered, this is a very likely condition in these regions. - Repression. Perceived or manufactured narratives, conditions of repression of populations are rich soil for insurgency. You, and other posters have already leaned into mass deportations, which is going to look and feel pretty repressive in the regions. This sort of stuff can split families and friends along “citizenship and true loyalty” lines. As has also been noted Ukrainian security services are in high gear and will be very likely pushing hard to root out cells before they can metastasize. Is there a likely perception of repression under these conditions? Is there a vulnerable narrative that can be exploited? - External support with interests. Normally passive support by a neighbouring nation, safe havens and blind eyes (eg Taliban in Pakistan) is bad enough. Active support at the levels Russia is likely to provide is something else. This is a North Vietnam/Mujahideen situation. Is this likely? We already saw Russia do this for years in these regions. Will Russia have an interest in making life a living hell for Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas? Will they have means and opportunity? Short of a complete collapse of Russia (and then we have a whole new set of problems), I suspect the answer is a hard “yes”. That is not great risk calculus nor is it “hype”. And in the “crap happens” camp of "no insurgency": “Solvyanks did not blow up, all the bad people will leave, those left are too lazy to do anything about it anyway and LNR/DPR and Russians suck.” Ok, well let’s put this one down on record then because we are not likely to agree. I believe that there is a high probability of civilian violent opposition to Ukrainian liberation in Crimea, and even though it will be a very small minority it will cause strategic effects. It will likely happen in the 1-5 years after liberation, faster if Ukraine gets too heavy handed. To counter this will take significant effort not only by Ukraine but by it allies to ensure those conditions above are stamped out. This will come at significant cost and risk, and cannot be the piecemeal support we have seen from the West so far. It will also take an epic reconciliation, reconstruction and enfranchisement effort on the part of the Ukrainian people as well as major reforms in Ukrainian government, some of which are facing off against generational internal cultures. Can it be done? Yes. Will it be done? Unknown You are on record as stating it is “unlikely”. Let’s see where it lands. The good news in all this is that if we get a chance to find out the region will have been retaken in the first place.

What facts? All we have seen so far is opinion. Sure we have Ukrainian posters who assess “zero chance of insurgency” but I think it is fair to say they are not really in an objective position right now…and no one is going to blame them for that. The only “facts” I can see are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea This says based on 2014 census that 67.8 of the Crimean population identified as Russian. I seriously doubt that number went down in the last 10 years given the situation. Everything else being posed is pure speculation and opinion. The Russians will all leave. The West will invest billions into what could be a front line region in a hybrid war…hell we will be lucky if we can get countries to invest in western Ukraine if Russia is still being the a$$hats they are likely going to be. The logic of “well all the trouble makers will leave and only the ‘good’ Ukrainians or neutrals will stay while we drop billions into reconstruction is pretty tenuous at best. This is not over hyping in the least. Overhyping is Tom Clancying the scenario where Russia start to support insurgency with WMDs. As a baseline going in we are talking about “liberating” a region that has been living under Russian governance for a decade. A region where we have seen some actions but no real insurgency or insurrection against Russian occupation for that same decade, even as this war unfolds. As to previously already re-liberated regions simply rolling over. Well first of all we really do not know what they did [aside: Slovyansk has a population of about 100k, Crimea is over 2.2 million]. We do know LNR and DPR sent tens of thousands to fight the UA and I do not think they all did so at gunpoint. And second, how quickly we forget the problems with Russian sympathizers and actions at the beginning of this war (eg Kherson). And of course we have not discussed Russians simply sending “insurgents” over the border to make lives miserable…like they did the last time. This is a highly complex situation rooted deeply in the human space and that is never simple or easy by any stretch. We are best prepared understanding the risks up front and ready to deal with them than pretending they can’t possibly happen.

Was going to leave this one but this is rife with risk and we do no service in downplaying them. First problem will be children born in Crimea since 2014. A bunch of ten year olds who likely have Russian citizenship who have never lived anywhere else. I honestly cannot see trainloads of them and their families being forcibly loaded onto truck and trains - being splashed all over the internet by Russian IO - not having a significant risk. Call it deportation, call it whatever you like but it is going to have blowback. Yes, it is exactly what the Russian's did, and it will take people about 3 seconds to link the two actions and ask "just who are we supporting here?" And then there are those who do not want to leave and try to stay by force. We can hope this is not the case but we cannot wish it away. The roots of an insurgency are there - a just cause and repression (from their point of view), no political mechanism in which to try and make change in their interests, support and backing from a neighboring nation with a grudge. How many times do we have to invade a country/region/territory (or be supporting one) and gloss over the fact that some of the population is likely to push back? I actually support re-taking the Crimea, it will definitely frame this war as a Russian loss. But I also do not recommend waving hands at what could be very serious security issues in that region that could blow up and back. One Ukrainian solder does one unrighteous shoot, and insurgencies are really good at setting those up, and the whole deal starts to unravel. Trainloads of deported Russian who have been living in Crimea for ten years with sad music on YouTube is also not really a good thing either. Like a lot of these liberation theories I am seeing a lot of hope strung together - Hope all the bad Crimeans leave once the RA collapses. Hope those that remain are neutral of supportive of Ukrainian liberation. Hope we don't have to do mass deportations that can start to look like ethnic cleansing, with a sinister far right undertone. Hope Russia does not arm anyone and everyone who is willing to make trouble for liberation. Man that is a lot of points of failure.

Best guess given what we have seen. So based on road infrastructure break through to Tokmak and one has expanding operational options. The greatest Russian military weakness of this war is manoeuvre. They really suck at it. They can drive but rapid manoeuvre to effect is not their strong point. Their artillery and ISR are not set up for it and their C2 is badly built for it. I would also bet money that their logistics can't support, especially with stuff constantly blowing up in the backfield. The Russians are good at static warfare. Digging in and sending wave after wave to die. Or digging in like a tick and making life difficult. IF the UA can break through then they can effectively cut that corridor as long as they force the RA into reactive situation that will require rapid manoeuvre. In the area we are talking about that is Tokmak. Vasylivka is a good secondary because it also greatly expands operational options. Take Tokmak and Melitopol is 40 kms away, they could sweep that area with ISR and artillery. This would effectively force the RA MSR along the M14, plus any back country roads...that is a narrow branch to sit on, and the other guy is on the truck with a hand saw. Could they keep up tempo? Going to have to or the RA will just dig in like a big red blob and they will have to do this all over again next spring. They do not need to take Melitopol. In fact that would play to Russia's strength of digging in. Cut it off and Kherson the place. Keep expanding the option spaces and get M14 within gun range and this thing is over as far as the strategic land bridge is concerned.

Next question - what is the RA ability to plug a hole right now. My bet is not so good. One thing we can all agree on right now is the UA needs to cut that corridor.

Compounding this is that the RA not only needs to melt...it needs to stay melted if a military solution is going to work. If Russia holds grudges or some political extremists uses this as a rallying point, we will be back at this again in a few years. The odds of a total RA collapse without Russia itself collapsing are very low. As to resistance...the bar is also extremely low for that these days. One screw up by "liberating forces" and the situation could go very sideways quickly. Maybe LNR/DPR roll over but a lot of their people died in this war and I am betting they also know how to hold a grudge. It is a pipe dream to think the locals in these regions are simply going to shrug their shoulders, especially if Russia continues to make trouble and provide support. Crimea is even worse, that one has bloody insurgency written all over it. Unless we are talking about ethnically cleansing the area and then we can say "so long" to western support. We can bat it back and forth all day but I would bet money the UA is already planning for counter-insurgency operations in some areas. The problem is there really is no other choice right now. Ukraine has to keep pushing and we all hope there is some sort of off-ramp that pops up. If Ukraine somehow manages to push Russia all the way back to 2014 borders then 1) the RA will likely regroup and start making trouble in short order because Russia "cannot lose this war" and there is no viable way to destroy its ability to wage war, or 2) Russia will fall apart completely and that has "worse" written all over it. What we need is 3) Russia accepts defeat just enough, somehow holds it together, regime change and gives the West a window to throw a blanket over Ukraine. And then as you note - fantasy. If we are in an era of Denial primacy, then this war could take a very long time and get extremely expensive for all involved. Western support will start to flag and the damn thing could wind up frozen. We then lag on reconstruction investment because of risk. We go back to 2014-2022 era of long conflict while both sides reload, but the backers of one side may have already moved on.

You mean how the Russians underestimated the readiness of Ukrainian local to “resist with their own hands”? Here is something the first month of this war taught us, and we should not forget…it doesn’t take too many enabled and empowered locals to really mess up a conventional military day. And it will be deeply in Russia’s interest to enable and empower them. I think this assumption that the LNR/DPR citizenry are sheeple who will simply bow to whoever is extremely shortsighted and not supported by the 8 year war that happened before this one. Hey if they do roll over and happily accept reintegration that is great, but to bet the bank on that is not a risk, it is a gamble. We can debate this round and round, but I simply do not agree that retaking Crimea and Donbas automatically lead to a Ukrainian total victory. In fact retaking would only happen after the decisive collapse of the entire RA in the theatre. Further, at that point the idea that Russia would 1) stop holding a grudge and 2) somehow be incapable of violent action within Ukraine in order to convince itself that the war was still on…are both very weak assumptions. Finally, the root of this war is not addressed by either retaking land or failure of the RA. That resides deeply in Russian conative frameworks that need to be re-wired completely and won’t be under the current regime. The reason why this thinking on Crimea and Donbas is so wrong, in my opinion, is that if Ukraine does not retake these regions then the narrative quickly becomes one of defeat for Ukraine and that is toxic in western circles because we have backed so many losers in the last 30 years we are spooked by the very idea of it happening again. Russia needs to negotiate with its own defeat, no one is going to be able to do it for them in this war. We are not in a war where force of arms will get Russia to accept anything. Force of the Russian people is another thing but as we can all see, we are not there yet. My greatest concern is that we are likely going to need a Plan B that includes rebuilding Ukraine and somehow pulling it into a security mechanism even if this war is still going on, which means real risk for the west…something we are not very good at right now. We took them all in the last two decades and got burned.