LongLeftFlank

And then there's this. As a onetime consultant who hates the entire profession with the heat of a million suns, I think this is a terrible idea. ...In fact, send the entire global McKinsey, BCG and Accenture teams to the Donetsk front and issue them Mosin-Nagants.

New commentary by Soldatov on the infighting within Russia.... https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-war-setbacks-strategy-generals-putin/31839737.html And this new reality for them, as they see it, is that Russia still has a peacetime army while [they] face [a] completely mobilized Ukrainian Army that is now being supplied by the West with the best weapons on the planet. So, as we all knew here, there is no 'second echelon' standing by, or even gearing up. What they're fighting with now is all there is. The problem here is that [there isn’t] a tradition in the Russian military or the Russian security services to [acknowledge] and [learn from] the mistakes they’ve made The fact is that this war is different from Putin's previous wars [in Georgia, Syria, and eastern Ukraine] because now we have Telegram channels. [On those], you have pro-military public opinion where you have lots of soldiers, lots of officers, [and] lots of veterans all talking -- not very openly -- but still expressing criticism toward the military. It might be about very small things. For instance, there was a big frustration about radio sets for helicopters recently. [They were asking in these channels] why they don’t have them and whether they need to collect some money, [which] led to a crowd-sourcing campaign [back in Russia.] In response, the Defense Ministry said that they don’t need them [and] that sparked some bitterness among soldiers and veterans alike for seeing the leadership as out of touch with their needs and unable to listen..

This is interesting. 2+ months in, UA infantry still owning the Russians, even spetsnaz, in the deadly ambush game.

Interesting maps here. Googtrans below 1. It's very possible that the Ukrainian troops are very close to #Vovchansk. New fires reported by FIRMS may indicate the result of an artillery fire. A very important railway line passes through this town 2. If the Ukrainians reach #Vovchansk, they will cross the supply line from the #Belgorod base to the main logistics base in #Kupiansk supplying the front at #Izyum and the northern #Donbas. The transports will have to travel very circularly

This is that long, vulnerable looking and (asymetrically) hard to reinforce RA front with no large river barriers, east of Zaporizhe that some of us here been eyeing; about halfway to Donetsk. If true, these KIA / WIA ratios are just awful, nearly 1 to 1. I'll defer to the pros, but I'd tend to think medevac is a pretty good barometer for overall logistics.... The frontline forces here have got to be mere shells at this point. ****** Also, UA mech forces enjoy their handiwork in Izium area. Terrain pretty open, so they are clearly in posession of the field. Counterattack or plain attack?

Interesting video, shows the kit of the RU infantry forces operating in Azovstal. Good luck getting overhead cover on top of that OP up there, boychiks. Do I smell a UB2 night strike coming up? On the bright side, you'll already be buried....

"Offers the best view in Warsaw, since you can't see it when you're inside", I believe the saying is, right?

Well, umm, thanks, I think.... Brother, I guess I've ended up as your last friend on here. It is a gaming forum and I cut you some slack personally as a good contributor to the community. But you are just living in a looking glass world right now, defending something that is just not worth defending. I mean Russia. As a 'leftist', you need to be aware that your country -- Mother Russia or the Last Hope of Socialism or Christianity or Whiteness or whatever you call it -- is simply nothing special in the world today as a polity, a gene pool or a civilisation. (Neither is mine, btw). Chess is a spectator sport in Russia, fine (so's binge drinking). And smart work keeping pace with global Yankeedom on the Bomb and space race and all. But today, South Asian kids are lapping Russians (and Americans and Germans and everyone else except maybe Koreans) in the quants that matter. And they'll move anywhere to seek good profitable work, and mainly stay sober. So forget Third Rome, Pushkin, your Great Russian Soul, the Brandenburg Gate and all that other baggage. There are no Exceptional Nations. No master races. No orcs either, just humans behaving badly. Or in other times, just trying to make their way in the world. So, grok this please. It is a GOOD THING that Russia as we know it today is devolving, maybe even breaking up entirely. Good for its neighbours, good for its non-Slavic minorities and, especially, good for Russians themselves. A whole world opens up for you all, at the crossroads of the 'Asia century' (which is already into its fourth decade, btw -- I count from 1991) once you get Moscow's boot off your necks. The future isn't slavery. Or if it kind of is in your particular belief system, then it's the same treadmill the average American is looking at now. And on the flip side, as a fluent English speaker with good quants you stand as good a chance of becoming one of the smug global master "PMC" class as anyone else on our planet. .... Or you can collectively sit in a cafe and ramble on about some sinister cabal robbing you (and vaguely threatening to burn the place to the ground if you can't have things your way). While each year more diligent and less prideful peoples grab the new world with both hands and leave you behind. [/rant]

Yeah, and much respect to you as a better Canadian than me. It's pretty clear from reading your stuff that you could have made a lot of money with your brainpower in the private sector, but instead you chose to serve the country. Many thanks. ....So service and self sacrifice comes naturally to you, of course, which is the spirit in which I read your response after thinking about it. But that makes you an exception. And if I can't have a million courageous martyrs, I'll settle for a million bright pragmatical cowards like me (lol) voting with their feet and not being part of the machine. Peace out!

1. Hmm, while I am not the veteran of two wars, I have also seen a little of life, including teaching school to war refugee kids for a period (the country in question used to be called Burma). And getting yourself and your loved ones out of the way of the war (and its devastating aftermath, which was my primary point) if you can possibly do so isn't merely a 'Western' thing. Meanwhile, the poor or ill informed or merely unlucky suffer what they must. Standing up to evil like Pastor Boenhoeffer is probably saintly and brave, but also likely to end the way he did. Not everyone is up for that. But we are all making plans for Nigel here. He should speak for himself P.S. I am probably misrepresenting your response, but I think you're misrepresenting my post as well. 2. So sure, the stakes in a civil war are substantial, possibly existential. What does that imply for the war aims of Ukraine and its Western backers?

...or if you don't like 70s art rock, there's Waylon Jennings Bonus Russian dark humour:

Action at that hydro site you tagged last week? Ah, never mind. The powerhouse layout is superficially similar but the surrounding terrain is all wrong. No third act for me in imagery analysis lol.

Yeah, the 79th AB had to stall and roll with the Russian left hook from Kreminna to Lyman. This is probably an example of a fluid situation where you really need some armour 'linebackers' to support the poor bloody infantry. Rocketeers can't do everything. Also, pretty hard for UA logistics to keep pace with that fluid front while also sustaining the battered resistance line at Rubizhne and south. And 93rd mech had it hard as well. Let's see how quickly that ranging boot goes onto the other foot....

@DMS, first, it takes some (stubborn Russian) courage to stand up here, so I will grant you that a least. It is also useful to discuss the likely postwar environment, which is in turn useful in understanding how the war should be ended militarily (e.g., at the 2002, 2014 or 2022 frontiers), so thank you for arguing your corner (Denials of atrocities aside, and it is *pointless* to keep arguing that in this place, so please don't get yourself banned). I'm also going to throw out some (more) controversial predictions, that will hopefully excite some wider comment from the superb commentariat here.... 1. I may be reading too much Galeev, but as someone who has spent his adult life on the front lines of the 'global economy' (energy business, first 'outsourced' in the 1990s and then 'offshored' to Asia in the 2000s), I find that Russia's time as a meaningful global, or even European, power is coming rapidly to a close. 2. For all 'Great Russia's' nostalgic mythomania, it has let its industrial economy rot away or expatriate (they aren't the only ones). Its nukes and army aside, Russia is now just another resource + low cost IT service economy, one of a number of its population size and education level in the world, along with Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam and Indonesia among others. In a short while, it may be down to competing with Pakistan, South Africa and the Philippines (ask a Serbian merchant seaman how that feels). It has a (stagnant) population of 140M, of which at least 40M would be very happy to go their own way. And now have a very real chance to do so.... 3. I predict that a wounded, humiliated, isolated, postwar Russia will effectively partition itself over the next decade, with or without Putin. Victoria Nuland, Soros, MI6, the Mossaad and the Illuminati don't need to plan it. That doesn't necessarily mean multiple new sovereign states in the near term, although it might. 4. Significant civil violence seems inevitable, as militias controlled de facto by the regional бояре shrug off the zero-value-added extortion of the Moscow gangster-courtiers and seize control of the exportable resource/revenue streams. 5. Make no mistake, these resources WILL find buyers, overseas, heedless of sanctions. The Glencores of the world are quite skilled at such games, from Iran days and before. The 5 Eyes will wink at it, so long as profits flow to the 'decentralisers', not to Moscow. And I don't even need to mention the numerous 'Crazy Rich Asian' family office/traders whose Wharton/LSE trained scions do such business today with utter impunity (and often Chinese backing). The margins are just too good in a globalised world awash in low cost capital. Big business drools over opportunities to price arbitrage in huge volumes around an artifical barrier that is filled with loopholes.... [I'm not just talking oil & gas here, btw, but a raft of other strategic minerals critical to a 'decarbonising' world that Russia holds in abundance and where the alternative supplies lie in similarly awkward places like Congo, the Andes and perhaps the Hindukush... or else deep in the oceans. China is an obvious buyer, but it won't necessarily have an interest in propping up an ineffective Moscow as a middleman]. 6. Back to Russia, I find it unlikely that this strife and defederalisation escalates to full civil war, save for Transnistria style clashes around army bases where Slavic Russian minorities refuse to cede authority to.... non-Slavs (I shall not identify ethnic or religious groups). Why? Simply because Moscow now has no potent armed force able to wage its side of such a civil war, enforce its writ and secure central control over the goodies. 7. OMON, Rosgvardia, VDV are all broken forces now, thanks to Putin's misadventure. Their cadre will largely ignore orders from Moscow, and defect to the militias. The boyars can also expect support from across nearby borders, including China and the central petro-Stans, looking to cut deals for resources. 8. Moscow can expect only the regular army to try to obey it. But its command is now discredited and in disarray, and any capable general is seen in Moscow as a threat to become a Napoleon. ....So TL:DR, Russia's legacy armed forces were up to 25 Feb 2022 the only thing that made that country 'special' in today's world, and hold its vast territory together as a going concern. That force is now punctured and deflating, except for the unusable nukes.... 9. This is another huge topic in itself, but I view Russian denuclearisation as a likely part of a settlement to return a far more loosely 'federated' Russia to the community of nations. It will take a few years, but I expect Russia to sell off [i.e. decommission, not sell to rogue actors] its strategic arsenal for cash aid, and to privatise the space-related stuff (Elon or Jeff or some tycoon in India following in the footsteps of the learned Jaipur maharajahs). Nukes are vastly more valuable to Russia as tradeable assets than as weapons. 10. So what does this mean for you and your countrymen, DNS? Others here have urged you to refuse and resist as much as you can, which sure, is very easy for us to preach from our comfortable keyboards, risking no harm to ourselves or our families. ...As an expat myself, I might suggest you and other highly intelligent and 'cosmopolitan' Russians to study which metro areas of your country (hint: not Moscow or Petrograd!) are likely to do well out of the next decade, and consider relocating there with your family, formally or informally. I'd personally head for the Kuban 'sunbelt' but that's of course personal choice and costs of living there are high. Karelia or Pskov, or maybe even Belgorod might also do well. ... I'd be very interested in your thoughts/ criticisms on the above, since you seem unafraid to express them here. More widely, may this war end swiftly, and also with a Ukrainian victory on Ukraine's terms. But remember always, living well is the best revenge!

Outta likes again, but this longtime Asia expat (early mover in the cynical North American offshoring wave you aptly noted) agrees with you on all points.

Well, you cherry picked one item from a long list in order to take offence. But like it or not, it's a fact that Muslim populations in Russia (and the FSU) aren't on great terms with the Christian Slavs historically. So hell yes, they do 'other' each other quite readily. In the same way, the WW2 PTO took on an extra layer of brutality because the whites and Japanese saw each other as alien and less than human. And it should surprise exactly no one reading this board that blond Germans 'othered' (and mass murdered) equally blond Slavs 3/4 of a century ago. And of course, there's Yugoslavia. So racism is in the eye of the beholder. That's my sole purpose in mentioning it; there is no other agenda. And no 'dig'. I have spent plenty of time in Muslim countries and don't have any problem personally although I've gotten some flak.

@Haiduk has noted that this guy and DanSpiun tend to be a few days behind the times with their source info, so this is FWIW: Hard to believe the Russians found a way into Dibrova (heavy woods) without more heavy losses to their (undermanned) assault infantry. Unless the UA is indeed withdrawing from Lyman.

Not much headway south of Izyum either, where the river isn't in the way. So are American hipsters all growing their beards out Viking style now, and sporting camo BassProShop caps?

As expected, Ukraine withdrew from #Yampil to positions along the Seversky Doniets River, the main defense line of the northern #Donbas near the cities of #Sloviansk and #Kramatorsk. I continue to think this is the Russian intended stop line for their "Potemkin Offensive" as well. But I guess we'll know in another week.

You're going to get pounded on here mate, but in consideration of your good service to this community, I will say the following: 1. Most of us here know a fair number of decent Russians (most of them, in fact), and nobody has any doubt you are a decent (Russian) guy. And yes, there are no doubt many decent Russians in the ranks of the invading forces (just as there were in the 1941 Wehrmacht). 2. There are also a fair number of trigger happy "Git Some!" jerks and occasional sadists in the ranks of any army, no matter how highly organised, supplied and disciplined. 3. And, sure, juvenile trash talk on Twitter needs to be substantially discounted unless there's reason to believe it is manifested in action. .... But Russian soldiers in Ukraine also have many strong incentives to behave brutally and murderously, and few restraints (although there is doubtless also decent behaviour, and probably a fair amount of simply minding one's own business): a. weak unit cohesion, bullying NCOs, lack of respect for officers and these days, for the Army itself, given the across the board lousy military performance; b. Widespread drunkenness in all ranks, including while on duty, with only arbitrary punishments; c. ranks drafted from the poorest segments of society, not across economic classes and regions (Moscow has suffered few dead, and most are officers); d. Many of the draftees are Asian and Muslim, with little love for whites, including Russians, who call them 'чурка' (churkas, which is roughly 'wood chips'). It's easy for them to Other the occupied population (and vice versa). That said, the brutality seems to be an equal opportunity recreation; e. the nonstop dehumanising 'Khokol' propaganda being pushed by RU media, probably more on the families than on the soldiers who are in the line. Yeah, that happens in war, even civil wars; f. Finally, said pig farmers have caused many soldiers' comrades know to die horribly, often burning to death in vehicles. Partisan attacks and ambushes -- actual or rumoured -- are particularly resented, as they always are, and used to justify vicious 'reprisals'. (Yes, of course, they're defending their homeland, but as a combat soldier, you aren't inclined to see things the enemy's way) g. I expect the troops get away with war crimes with impunity; there are no disciplinary consequences and officers have more pressing concerns anyway. Feel free to cite counterexamples though, if that is incorrect. So you'd need to be wilfully blind not to see the toxic mix that makes this behaviour all entirely credible. May this war end swiftly.

My top 10 song lyrics of all time include: If you belieeeve they put a man on the moon (man on the moon)....

out of likes mate, but this was good!

"National divorce" (i.e. the breakup of the old Muscovy empire) is where Galeev is heading, and that thesis seems to me to make some sense. But I don't think it is best accomplished through invasion, if only due to the minor concern of the 2000 nuclear weapons. As I've noted before, I could see a postwar situation where Ukraine is booming and becoming a strong tech factory offshoring alternative to ASEAN and India. And over the next decade, the adjoining Russian oblasts find their own youth sneaking across the border to take lower rung jobs. Their governors (Kuban, Kursk, Voronezh) will increasingly agitate for closer ties and less red tape/extortion from Moscow. And over time, Uke-owned maquiladoras spring up in Belgorod, etc. (While e.g., that Moscow skank who was telling her boyfriend to rape Ukrainian girls could end up table dancing for the Vikings in a rebuilding Mariupol) P.S. Great discussion, the last few pages btw. I have had to step out a bit cuz work, but keep it up!

If I recall correctly from Daniel Goldhagen, this photo postcard was sent home by a German soldier to his family, with a note on the back sharing the 'difficult work' he had to do in the name of the Greater German Reich:

LOL, these snakeeaters HALOed into the Ugly Forest and hit every branch on every tree lol. [full disclosure: I resemble that remark! And I swear I recognize a few of them from Burgos pubs]