LongLeftFlank

Meanwhile, up at strat level... Horowitz's take on the likely end game, mainly stuff we all know here: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/05/09/five-ways-the-war-in-ukraine-could-end-view “Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please,” Machiavelli observed.... There is a more “prudent” course of action for Putin, one that I think is more likely than “doubling down” given the risks involved...Russia could try to simply “lock in” the territory it already secured, and “dig its heels”.... The World Bank recently predicted that the Ukrainian economy would shrink by 45%. By contrast, the highest estimate suggests the Russian economy will contract by 15%. This would not be the first time Russia... turns active conflict into a frozen one for lack of a better solution.... A frozen conflict has one key advantage for Russia: It may well help it demobilise the West. As the fighting becomes more sporadic, media attention may shift away to other crises.... Ukrainian victory would likely come from the attrition suffered by Russian forces, either due to exhausting offensives, or the need to maintain control over increasingly rebellious areas. Ukrainian forces have been quite effective at hitting Russia with limited but painful counter-offensives, taking advantage of a Russian penchant for large-scale offensives and reliance on poorly defended supply lines. The fog of war is still thick, but I would argue that [victory] is the only realistic and positive “end-game” for the West. Giving Putin an “exit ramp” out of the conflict will only work once Russia’s defeat in Ukraine is clear, and not a second before.

Super interesting thanks. I don't have any domain knowledge to add here, but this feed is worth checking. 'Dan' tries to geolocate the bang bangs and put them in context rather than just posting ooh ahh vids. Izyum is the linchpin. And clearly the UA big guns are voting that way. Something is getting, if you'll forgive the technical jargon, effing plastered.

1. Not 'often overlooked' here lol! 2. FWIW. This gent does good analysis of fire maps to ID hot spots but less sure of his strategic-operational chops: 3. I'll see your Cossacks and raise you...

Even for the meals, it is often the civilians who provide them. It's the same for gasoline to move in a vehicle. You constantly have to organize yourself, to know someone who knows someone. While anecdotal, and weighted to the early 'crowdsourced' days of the Ukrainian defenseh, this kind of thing is far more worrisome to me than anything the Russians are doing right now. Without consistently effective logistics and comms, UA will not be able to sustain more than localised offensive operations, especially against prepared positions (which I take it as a given that even inexperienced Russians can quickly get decent at, given a will and some time. Intrenchment, after all, is an art hundreds of years old). It would be catastrophic for this war to go static with 20% of Ukrainian territory, especially Kherson, still in Russian hands.

Seconded and thirded. Please wade in, @SeinfeldRules!

I'm just taking the pss, of course. No, the most useful definition of (business) strategy I ever saw was that strategy is how you decide what kinds of great ideas you are NOT going to dissipate your time and treasure chasing. AKA, process of elimination. Which carries its own risks of course, including 1. assuming perfect info (falsely) and then letting 'perfect be the enemy of good'. 2. herd behaviour, and thus too much money chasing a few obvious 'low hanging fruits'. Don't know how that flanges up though with your prior re Russian options overtaken by events and dwindling to dumb and dumber. ...Also, I personally liked your 'Teeth 'n T&ts' diagrams from CMCW.

Augh! I'll be seeing 2 x 2s next. Be warned, @sburke and I 'decided' a few pages back that the entire global management consultant corps should be 'engaged' on the Donetsk front... with one bolt action rifle for every 2 empty suits (that's about as much real world technology as they could figure out how to use). So congratulations, I think we just found the general to lead that legion of the damned into hell!

Great analysis, cheers. And prudent of him, as noted. A physical double would be tricky and lead to even more CTs.

outta likes but good enough for me, many thanks.

Sure, nobody doubts that, but about the last thing Ukraine needs right now is for him to blow up and have to be replaced by a committee. Functionally, things would keep running much as they are of course, but the symbolic element would be lost and that's important in maintaining support overseas, in the aforementioned celebrity-crazy West.

Well, I was supecting that was bluescreen work and a treadmill about 30 seconds in. The lighting on the Prez is a little too steady to be outdoors. Probably safest though, not worth getting killed for such things.

The defenses northeast of Sloviansk (Lyman-Sviatohyrsk) seem to be holding up, and the river still lies beyond. This guy gets some very good insights on action from the FIRMS wildfire tracker, but his sources can also sometimes be a bit dated. So don't get too excited about any one point. Somebody slap me down if I'm wrong here, but punching into the eastern (Seviorodonetsk) end of the Ukrainian line is kind of like the 1940 Germans ignoring Belgium and attacking into the heart of the Maginot Line. The UA has prepared fallbacks and fallbacks and fallbacks.... So congrats, Ivan, you bled yourself white in Rubizhne for months and finally broke through to 'the green fields beyond'. Except you need to leave all your (oh so plentiful) infantry to seal off or assault that oil refinery with more nuclear bomb shelters in it.....

Yes, and I suspect our Russian lurkers are all nodding their heads going, see, you openly admit that's the US game! 1. What they just don't get is that the West literally didn't *care* that much about Russia one way or another before it started trying to reassemble the USSR Humpty Dumpty. 2. The internet and globalisation has meant Russia is just another corrupt resource rich midsize country, with some good cut rate IT talent sprinkled in. There's several of those around the world now, and there are now 2 new actual world class civilisations for Yanqui Imperialismo to compete with (generally peacefully, we hope because they have nukes too. That club is no long exclusive). 3. Chinese designs on Siberia and that long border and the new Great Game in the central Stans all meant that the West had just as strong an interest in bribing Russia into moving its way than to connive at its dismantlement and defanging. Putin seemed more than clever enough to play that game. 4. And this is the bit Russians really can't seem to grasp. Other than the nukes, the West wasn't really afraid of Russia, even when it stomped Georgia in 2007. It hasn't really ever been viable as an economic competitor or a civilisational hub or anything else. Nobody is flocking there except a few Central Asians (and not any more, nice job). (Lukashenko is about their last friend in the world now, Bog help them. Unless you count Imam TikTok. Hitler's Anti-Comintern pact had more brainpower -- Antonescu and Tiso, anyone? -- and the only smart one, Franco, sensibly stayed the hell out while sending his own Falangist wingnuts off to die) 5. With its resources, Russia could have turned itself over time into a kind of Australia (with less cheerful drunks), but nope, it's closer to Papua New Guinea. The kakistocracy running the place from Moscow only knows how to loot, incompetently, not manage.

On the more cynical side, based on the revolving door of the Western Great and Good (Angelina Jolie, Bono, etc.) all creating huge carbon footprints virtue signaling in Lviv, in addition to various pols hoping some Zelenskyy hero mojo rubs off on them, Ukraine is good to go for a bit. I normally gag on all that stuff (in case you can't tell, lol), but well, I guess that's where Western Civ is these days. Poland, of course, is pleased to have another biggish dog in the fight, and not to be hosting the latest European war at home for a change. So they're pretty much fully onside, I assume, along with the Balts. It's the ones doing the bleeding who need to decide when and how to end it though.

View from the Chinese OSINT twitterverse....

Sigline worthy, mate!

Yes, and there's no doubt of the Russian intellectual-analytical tradition. In uni, I remember reading the Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal papers (in translation), with all the detailed eyestrain inducing maps, with "the circles an' the arrers' an' a paragraph on the back of each one" dissecting all the key 'Liberation' operations of 1942 - 1945. But each monograph was also prefaced with the obligatory paternoster: "The fascist attack on the USSR in 1941 was an act of perfidy". Plus an approving reference to "the primary importance of Party political work among the troops prior to and during the operations." So, as I have learned in my working life since then, it's a lot like doing business with the French (and believe me, I know): the theoretical underpinning and the analytical reasoning are first rate, but only the very top guy can actually make a decision, and you'd literally rather lose a war than interrupt his holiday.... Or, per the punchline for one of my favourite Dilbert cartoons....

Further to the conundrum of how to combine an authoritarian state with modern social media and a population which loves to grumble, here is a RFERL piece (it's the West's own prop megaphone, of course, so season to taste): https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-putin-victory-day-mobilization/31837557.html "We have seen that trotting out public-sector workers for demonstrations in support of him has been rather difficult," she said. "People are ready to write social-media comments. They are ready to give silent assent. They are ready for anything that leaves them in peace so that they can go about their business. This is the consensus of an authoritarian society." "Now Putin is trying to transform it into a totalitarian society -- to mobilize it," she concluded. The Kremlin narrative is that this is "a war with the entire world: 'The whole world is against us, and we are fighting for some abstract justice, for our past, and so on,'" she said.... "People understand that something is wrong, and successes aren't coming," he added. "That means the guilty ones must be found. And who is to blame? Fifth- columnists, paid Western propagandists, national traitors. As Vladimir Putin's position worsens, the role played in our public life by the search for enemies grows larger."

I've been searching for a good Russian language cover to this classic (reheard from a talented busker in a Manila park yesterday, one day before the Philippine election) as a fitting theme song for 9 May 2022.... (LLF's thesis: most darkly depressing songs sound better in Russian) I found a rather good one here (over the original LimpBizkit video), but the below seems vastly more emblematic of the deeply heartfelt lameness of the entire Russian enterprise. Complete with nearly a minute of rambling introduction. Like a slow motion train wreck, you just can't look away.... OK, enough marginally OT posts from me for a bit....

Being a 6'5 nerd and a southpaw (LongLeftFlank), I once went to a Halloween party as John Big Booté. (I don't look enough like Lithgow to pull off Lizardo) It being the 'best' kind of party, pretty much everyone got it. And I had wisely saved over a light gray early 1980s suit with a vest. The eyeglasses were the hardest part of the ensemble.

Yeah, 'pulled out' is pretty much appropriate. Since they 'service' clients in the way a bull services a cow. Sure guys, your engagement can be on a time & materials basis, evergreen at rack rates (payable in rubles). Break out the Opus One! ... The UA will provide any required 'cap' on billings. Otherwise, we bring in ATKearney to provide the necessary blocking detachments. Fixed lump sum, payable on completion)

Wait, he's supposed to find Buckaroo Banzai not John Whorfin! [/]

… Now, Andy did ya hear about this one? Tell me, are ya locked in the punch? Andy, are ya goofing on @BFCElvis (hey baby) Are we losing touch? If you belieeeve they put a man on the moon (man on the moon).... But yeah, JK did have some entertainment value, in small doses. Perhaps there might be a general amnesty once the festivities wind down and we run out of better things to talk about. Who knows, with malice towards none and charity for all, even 'Wrong Left Turn' Michael Dorosh could reappear among the living.

the General Forum just migrated here.