Rokossovski

Given your handle, I imagine this should resonate:
P. We will accept battle?
C. Certainly, why not?
P. We are outnumbered three to one, and five to one on horse. What uninjured men you have are scared and hungry and desperate.
C. That is the advantage we must press home.
P. I was not aware that irony had military usage.
C. We must win or die. Pompey's men have other options.
Your point is well taken, and many of us here have been watching closely for signs of improvement, even in ancient tactical fundamentals like ambush and entrenchment.
Having a back against the wall makes a difference. Russians aren't defending the Rodina, and they know it. So evolution for them is not yet less dangerous than disobeying orders.

This is the space for loitering munitions. Even if a truck full of Switchblades doesn't replace an artillery battery (and it offers mobility, manpower and as a result logistic advantages over one) it fills that gap for beyond visual range precision attack on mobile targets.

My sensor sees two dudes in a tree line. Cool! I can hit those two with a single PGM. Done, dusted. Let's move on.
*boom*
Oh, damn. There were actually another 15 dudes in that tree line, but my sensor didn't pick them up and my one PGM missed them precisely. Q, send me another BMP full of crunchies, willya? And Guns, hit that /whole/ tree line for me this time please?

So this is a common thought, especially in the American artillery community about a decade ago. The issue is that valuing precision over mass briefs well, but only in certain situations. Against point targets or specific stationary systems (ADA, command posts), yes - precision is crucial! Much better to hit it once and be done. Guided rockets, laser and GPS guided shells, and other precision munitions are great tools. But that’s only the portion of the fight. The Excalibur or GMLRS capabilities sound good on paper, but the realities of its employment preclude individual targeting of maneuvering vehicles in almost all cases.   Even laser guided munitions can be difficult to utilize - the US Army had a laser guided round (Copperhead) but got rid of it due to usability issues. The artillery answer to maneuvering units is MASS - throw as many dumb rounds as possible and saturate the area. It is far cheaper and faster to throw dumb rounds at the enemy then try to conduct laser designation on individual vehicles. Imagine a vehicle in heavy tree cover, designated by a UAV sitting at a significant slant angle to avoid enemy ADA  - how can you be sure the laser is actually designating the right place? The reality is more complicated then you think. How can you refine a grid accurately enough to achieve effects with a GPS guided munition? A lot of effort goes into developing targetable data for guided munitions - otherwise you miss your target very precisely. 
You also have to appreciate the morale and suppressive effect massed artillery represents - even harassing fires can pin a unit in place, limiting movement and observation. It isn’t always about see target, kill target - your UAV may never see the ATGM team in the forest, but if you mass a battalions worth of artillery on that tree line for 30 minutes I guarantee whoever is there will NOT be looking for your tanks. Expensive and limited precision munitions can not replicate that effect.
This is where you can’t look at this and assume guided munitions, just because they achieved a direct hit on a vehicle. Howitzers can achieve this effect given enough rounds and proper adjustment… it’s just unlikely, but not impossible. 
 
I have some thoughts on this video in particular that I will address tonight. There are several other comments in this thread that I’d like to discuss as well (including most of your post BFC, I’ll get there I promise!) but I need to wait till after work to give it the proper attention. 

What will Ukraine do now?  I grabbed this off dailykos, not sure where they picked it up.  Purple rail lines all converging at Kupiansk.  Would completely unhinge the whole sector.  But would also expose UKR forces to counterattacks w/o being dug in.  Maybe this is what UKR wants to do though.  They don't want to slug it out, they want to unhinge, which they were very successful at in the Kyiv-NW & Brovary RU thrusts.  They are already in position for unhinging the izyum salient.  It'd be nice to cut off those forces so they can't come to the aid of Kupiansk.
Or the smaller solution of gaining position to threaten Vovchansk, which greatly complicates RU supply but does not unhinge the front. 

 
On another note, there's a lot of talk about why Putler didn't do this or that w respect to military readiness.  I think we need to understand this as a coup that was backed up by military force.  It was, IMO, not a military operation w a coup sprinkled in for insurance.   When looked at in this sense, everything falls more into place. 
 
 
 

“Artillery supremacy” isn’t a doctrinal term in this case like air supremacy vs superiority. I use it highlight the picture that Trent is trying to paint, that the Ukrainians have a system that vastly outpaces the Russians or even Western nations. My argument is that the data he uses to reach that conclusion isn’t well sourced or understood by him. 
 
The data I see, is Ukrainians artillery primarily operating in traditional formations, utilizing optical fire control equipment, shooting standard ammunition and achieving normal distribution and sheaf patterns. I can certainly believe that Ukrainians are operating with “roving guns” - it’s a great tactic for executing harassment fires - but it doesn’t seem to be typical and they are certainly not fully utilizing digital linkages as depicted in Trent’s post.
Russians getting dumber - there is certainly nothing wrong with more mass, and is in-fact one of the main issues we see US units struggle with when it comes to employing artillery in training - 20 years of COIN has made units hesitant to mass their battalions. It’s a teaching point every exercise. Mass is a critical principle of Fire Support and incredibly effective, wouldn’t say the Russians are dumber for massing. 
Ukrainians being better, faster and more precise - again, I don’t see the data to back that up. Artillery utilizing standard optical fire control equipment can easily achieve effects within 25m of a target using adjustments. It is very rare to find artillery footage this isn’t edited with quick cuts between volleys. Can be quite easy to paint the picture of laser accurate artillery, when the reality could be that it took multiple rounds of adjustments to achieve that effect. I’m not saying that it’s not happening - I’m saying what we are seeing isn’t proof of it either. 

I probably have more questions then observations at this point. I don't think anything fundamentally has changed from previous conflict, even dating back to WW 1. Artillery is still a crucial arm of any modern military and is your only all weather, truly responsive means of shaping the battlefield. Artillery is the King of Battle, even with today's technology. I can't say I've been truly shocked at anything I've seen so far.
All of my observations are based off OSINT videos - I imagine most of the US military's observations of the conflict are still close hold at higher levels due to the sensitivity of collecting in an active conflict.
Drones have proven to be incredibly useful but I don't see anything revolutionary or fundamentally doctrine-altering with them - aerial observers have been a thing since the Civil War, and artillery battalions during WW2 literally had their own observation planes sometimes - we can just get them closer then ever before without risking a human. You still see a lot of "long range" observation from drones in these strike videos however - so there is definitely a real threat of ADA/EW that is keeping drones at a distance. It's harder then ever before to hide your forces from observation, but I imagine there are a lot of smart people churning away at a practical military answer to the UAV problem, and I think it will have an easier solution then the tank will have dealing with top down attack, fire-and-forget ATGM systems.
Loitering munitions I'm still not 100% sold on - probably useful for high value targets (radar, ADA, command posts), but seem hard to utilize at a more tactical level.  Honestly, it seems like a complex solution to a problem that isn't terribly hard to solve with more conventional and flexible fires. The Switchblade 300 is seriously unimpressive to me, a glorified flying grenade. Great for taking out an ISIS leader in the middle of a crowd, not so impactful in a war where individual casualties are a given and virtually meaningless in a tactical or operational sense. I don't think the Switchblade 300 is going to single-handedly stop a town from being lost. Would LOVE to see an actual statistical analysis on the effectiveness of loitering munitions, that isn't all buzz words and "ooooh scary kamikaze drones!!"
Armored vehicles seem to be more vulnerable to artillery then commonly believed in the US/NATO. Lots of footage of (what seems to be) destroyed vehicles due to rocket and cannon fire.
Not seeing much utilization of mortars. Not sure if this is due to a lack of use, improper characterization of OSINT videos, or a function of UKR/RUS TOE lacking a significant amount of mortar tubes?
Russian and Ukrainian artillery forces seldom use effective cover and are often lined up in neat rows in the open, instead of utilizing dispersion and tree lines. I think this is mainly a function of the manual nature of most of their artillery, which requires howitzers to be somewhat closer and more orderly for a variety of technical reasons I won't get in to (unless you would like me to). This is in contract to the digital, self-locating, self-laying howitzers the US military has, which have a more robust ability to "roam". Of note, the M777s we gifted to Ukraine do not seem to have this self-locating capability, as the two videos I've seen of the howitzers operating in Ukraine showed them lacking these digital systems. These may be the Canadian howitzers though. Will be following that one closely.
Lack of digital systems aside, the above does stir some questions in my mind on the actual effectiveness and feasibility of true "counterfire" - meaning a howitzer shoots, then immediately has to move to avoid rapid and accurate fires from an opposing artillery unit. I don't think UKR and RUS artillery units are so pig headed or naive to not appreciate the usefulness of emplacing in a tree line - I wonder if the impetus to do so is even there. What I mean by that is: how often are artillery units shooting and then immediately taking fire? I don't see many videos of fires being directed on artillery units actively engaged in shooting, displacing, or even moving between firing points. In fact, in most videos of fire against an artillery battery, I don't see any people at all! Just the howitzers. And videos I've seen of artillery units firing don't seem to have a terrible sense of urgency on the need to displace immediately, which raises even more questions for me on why that would be the case. Again, would LOVE to do a deep dive into counterfire procedures during this conflict, and the effectiveness of firefinder radars and whether we truly need to "shoot and scoot" after every mission to stay alive. From my limited view of things, I'm just not seeing the same counterfire fight our doctrine envisions us fighting - but maybe that's just due to the nature of what videos are actually released versus what is happening... would love to know the actual ground truth there.

Hi all, I am a new account on this forum, but I have been reading this thread every day for the past couple months after getting referred to it from elsewhere. This thread, the daily ISW reports and Perun's videos are my primary sources for keeping track of what's going on in this war and why. Thank you everyone for the great contributions.
My account took a couple days to get approved, so this comment is out-of-date relative to the comment I wanted to respond to, but there have been several times the topic of China came up so I thought it would be worth posting anyway. I hope it's still interesting to someone. If not, please scroll past, I don't want to distract too much from the excellent analysis you all are sharing.
This is an area where I have a personal interest and some first-hand experience, having lived in China for several years.
I don't think it is very helpful to describe China (or any authoritarian country) as merely left wing or right wing, in particular when that statement comes from partisans in a democratic country. All too often there is a cynical incentive to try to associate the policies of the authoritarian regime with opposing political factions in the democratic system. I think it's better to assess the policies on their own.
Xi has overseen several socially conservative policies - for example broadcast restrictions on media featuring tattoos, piercings, effeminate men, same-sex relations and so on. But this is only part of a larger scale censorship effort that has also seen arrests of local citizen reporters and foreign media not only blocked at the Great Firewall but also pushed out of reporting from inside the country at all. He also spearheaded a popular anti-corruption campaign that coincidentally targeted all the senior party officials that might stand against him. And, of course, he removed term limits and will likely get a third term in the upcoming national congress. These are suspiciously autocratic moves, which is worrying in a country that since Deng has at least made a pretense of winding back the power of figureheads and trying to build more of a loyalty to the party as an abstract entity.
Xi has also allowed a populist rise of nationalism, xenophobia and Islamophobia, and he has put a strong emphasis on increasing national security and modernizing the military. One aspect of this was a revision to the national defense law that expanded the justifications for military actions, and placed more power into a military commission headed up by Xi.
On the other hand, in the past few years the party has also strengthened government controls over business. Notably it halted the IPO of Ant Financial, often portrayed overseas as a punishment for Jack Ma (co-founder of Alibaba) commenting on excessive regulation, but more likely just because the party wasn't happy that some of these tech giants are a threat to its power. Since then it has also been using anti-monopoly guidelines and other means to regulate major players in industries such as finance, tech and education. It's also hit several high-profile individuals for tax evasion, and for a brief period the official messaging seemed to be that speculation on real estate and the pursuit of excessive wealth was inappropriate, although that seems to have been tempered somewhat due to the COVID-related economic slowdown.
But a key point running through all of these policies is this: 党政军民学，东西南北中，党是领导一切的 - government, military, society and education - east, west, south, north and center - the party leads everything. And who leads the party? Recently the phrase "with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core" has become more common in the state media. This political structure isn't comparable to democratic countries where there is no singular authority and it's normal to have spirited and open debates on the issues.
I think the main thing to take away from Chinese politics under Xi is not to figure out if he represents a version of the left or the right in a democratic country, but to understand that his primary motivation is to ensure that the party retains control over every aspect of society. All policies are designed with that goal in mind. In my opinion Xi does have generally nationalist and socially conservative views, but I think he is also mindful that wealth inequality can lead to unrest and the downfall of the party, and that would be the ultimate sin.
TLDR: what Steve said
On how this affects the war in Ukraine - both the state media apparatus and the prevailing chatter on social media (which is ultimately shaped by what the state chooses not to censor) is solidly in the camp of this war somehow being a result of NATO expansion and American hegemony. I don't think there is an easy way for the party to publicly roll back its support for Putin. The issue will probably just remain in the current limbo, with the party simply claiming to remain neutral or impartial.
On what it portends for Taiwan - it's definitely useful for the party to study and learn from this war, but I don't think it will have an impact on its timeline for taking Taiwan. The party has enough problems with zero-COVID and a teetering economy right now - I don't think it is in a position to fast-track any actions. I suspect we might see some more signaling after Xi is confirmed for a third term (second half of this year) and then after the 2024 presidential election in Taiwan, which is likely to be the first where 18-20 year olds can vote (referendum on that later this year). Either way, it's interesting to see how the party has built up the mythology of Taiwan as a wayward little brother who is temporarily misguided and will someday return to the fold. That has benefits in that it creates popular support for "unification", but it might also make a full-blown invasion unpopular. Annexation is surely off the table now, after the PR disaster of Hong Kong 2019. A naval blockade is often suggested as a way to strangle the island, but that might only strengthen its people's resolve. I think if the party is to succeed in its designs on Taiwan, it will need Putin's failed "take the capital in 3 days" strategy to actually work. I would be very interested in a wargame that tackles this scenario.
Anyway, back to my lurking hole, and thanks again for the fantastic thread.

BINGO!



I didn't see Gerasimov, but could easily be that I just didn't recognise him

If that's the case, why can't we call in arty on ground which is out of LOS in CMBS without a TRP?

just ignore him, he clearly has no idea what he's talking about and has a head full of propaganda.  I've seen enough that I hit the ignore button.  If I want to see that kind of stuff I can just go straight to qanon & cut out the middleman.
 

Some of the conversation over the few pages have referenced the former Yugoslavia.  Which brings back... well, not so good memories.
I was a Canadian peacekeeper in Bosnia in latter half of '93.   During the Croatian offensive in the Medak in Sept of '93, I was with the 2 PPCLI when we went into the sh*tstorm to try to stop the ethnic cleansing going on.  The Croatian army attacked our unit during that operation, a thing that the Croatian government denies to this very day.  Despite us photographing the Croatian dead after the battle and collecting their ID, etc.    We had god damn evidence and to this day, the Croatian government position is that they never attacked us.
Part of our job, beside trying to keep the warring factions apart, was to document evidence of ethnic cleansing and I was in charge (I was an officer) of a evidence collection team.  So, literally thousands of photos, videos.  Transcripts of interviews with witnesses and victims.  Six months exposed to that living hell, day after f*n day....
So I had the evidence, because sometimes our official recording devices ran out film or tape and we used our personal recording devices to finish up at a site.
After I got out the military, I found myself sometimes on various military forms about games, such as this one.  Arma forums, military wargame forums... that sort of thing.  And as it happened, I ran into forum members from Croatia and Bosnia Serbs and we would get into it.
Universally, every Croatian or Bosnian Serb forum poster denied what happened there.  And I was called a liar on many occasions for telling them them the truth of that war as I was there and they weren't.  And I have evidence to back up my claims.  No one believed me and if I offered visual proof, they didn't want to see it or they disclaimed it as fake.
I remember a particular Bosnian Serb who was not in the war but we got deep into the weeds discussing what happened during that war.  Deny, deny, deny.  It never happened.  Until videos that the Bosnian Serbs took of them killing civilians and dumping them in mass graves what was recorded by the very soldiers who committed the atrocities surfaced and made it onto their local media and they couldn't deny it any longer.  Those videos were part of the process besides sanctions that resulted in some notable Bosnia Serb / Serbian leaders being turned over to the ICC for prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  After the revelation came out, this individual on that forum who I had spent hours engaging with about the culpability of Serbs in the atrocities simply ignored me from that point onwards.  I will never know why.... was it that he discovered that I was right all a long and he was wrong and he was ashamed (as he would have been) or he simply wanted to hang onto his delusion of what narrative he wanted to believe was true and he knew that I would keep chipping away.   
Denial is a powerful thing.   I don't understand why it has such power but it does.  People can dismiss an outright objective reality because to accept the truth is to undermine what they think reality is or should be.   I don't get it and is beyond madding to see the denials in the face of objective reality happen over and over.
Sigh.   I don't know why the hell I rambled on with this.  Maybe it was a story I need to tell to remain sane in light of the same brutality I witnessed back in Bosnia happening in Ukraine now.  Or maybe I still am the greater fool for believing my experiences in Bosnia can be an object lesson to others about holding onto a narrative that is personally comfortable but runs counter to all the real evidence to the contrary.   DMS, I am looking at you....
The truth will come out after all this is over.  At least, I hope it does.  The truth of this war needs to be told and codified so generations that follow can know what really happend.
Now at the end of this and reviewing it, I feel that I should have deleted this or apologize for it.  
I am hitting post. It is my truth.  Let people accept it and learn something from it or ignore it.  I needed to say this for a long time.   
 
 

COVID and his cancer and his impending morality probably hit him during trump's period, likely he was counting on him being reelected and with that security for trump to undertake more chaos domestically and foreign policy wise, Putin would would do the same invasion only Biden got elected instead.
The unfortunate part about of this destruction of Russian imperialism and colonialism is that it could have been avoided had Russia been able to look inward and recognize the agency of her colonized and imperial ruled peoples and therefore with the reset of the fall of the Soviet Union undertake a more cooperative framework that may well have led to joining NATO and the EU in the future.
DMS really does not give much consideration to Ukrainians asking for agency or the Baltics, seems to consider the Russian sphere of influence to be the only important factor in the relations with Eastern Europe. Does he believe the bombings of Belgrade to be legitimate? Seems no, he seems to think the genocide of Kosovo is fake or maybe not a justification for the intervention of NATO.
Ultimately, accepting the genocide attempt occurred in Kosovo means accepting the bombing of Belgrade was legitimate, which means the attempted wiping of Ukraine by Russia is the same sort of action that brings about the bombing of Moscow.
I still want him to answer whether he thinks the rhetoric calling for the erasure of Ukrainian culture is justified, just overblown rhetoric or if he considers it a overstep.
^
If nothing else, the shock of Russia being defeated by Ukraine is going to hit Russians hard, NATO assistance regardless, DMS is right, it will be utterly humiliating. What Russia, many pro-Russians argue is that allowing the humiliation to take place is going to unleash even worse outcomes from Russia and the Russian people.
As others have stated, Russia is acting like a abusive ex-, trying their best to threaten and beat their partner back into their world.
This cannot occur anymore. I'm sorry but the West cannot let Russia brutalize it's former colonies to retain their sense of being.
Like many abusive people, part of the framework for their justification for their actions rests on being the victim, and being the maligned party.

FIFY  Apart from that, I agree wholeheartedly, that's how everyone is feeling round this parts.

Strange how drone footage makes it look like something out of a game where you rotate the camera around a unit and inspect it from all angles. There's something surreal about seeing real way in this 'virtual' way, I think.

Open your eyes. The only reason all those former WP nations wanted to join NATO was because...
Russia was a clear, obvious threat to them.
If they weren't in NATO, they'd be annexed now, like Crimea. Look at Sweden and Finland. Sweden has been an officially neutral country since '45, even though their social and political make up suits them ideally to be members of the NATO bloc. But they've ploughed their own furrow until Russia started making actual moves westward. And now Russia thinks that threatening people who're looking for shelter from their threats is a great way of persuading them that they don't need to worry about the threats. It's the politics of imbeciles.
If Russia hadn't been an existential threat to the Baltic states and Poland and Romania and Czechia and Slovakia and Hungary would not have felt the need to shackle themselves to the defensive alliance which comes with only obligations (if you aren't going to be attacked), not concrete benefits (those largely come from EU membership).
The former Warsaw Pact countries would no doubt have rather ignored their military and "beat their swords into ploughshares". But Russia has always loomed large as the object lesson that "them as beat their swords into ploughshares end up ploughing for them as don't".
Start, as we in the West do, by assuming anything your Government tells you is a lie (or, if you want to be generous, a self-serving shading of the facts on the ground). Your problem seems to be that you only have Government organs telling you anything, so you've nothing to fill in the gaps that ignoring the Government's lies leaves. We over here in the free world (you're not in that, by the way, though you'd be welcome) have the option of listening to other sources. Sometimes, those sources confirm what the Government is telling us, and that does make life easier when that's the case.
Oh, wait: you've access to this forum. Read it. Judge how the information is being presented. Draw your own conclusions. 

No surpsises here. I guess it really is too much to ask of you to acknowledge war crimes of your own soldiers today when you cannot even acknowledge genocide from decades ago.

"We liked you until you stopped Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia" is not the own Russians may think it is.

You see, that's the fundamendal flaw in the whole Russian perception of the world. NATO is not moving to the east, it is invited, sometimes desperately begged to come, cause the alternative is living in ruski mir, which really really sucks, in any imaginable aspect.
Also, nobody is really there to get you. Nobody really cares, all we want is for Russian Empire/ USSR/ Russia to piss off and stop being a problem. 

@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!

Unfortunately the Ukrainians lose in this footage, I'm glad they were taken as prisoners and not killed I'm sure they would rather have fight to the last guy but sometimes there's no way to. Probably a decent professional Russian unit, which it seems so since they used the right tactics for this engagement. I don't think many of the Ukrainian soldiers got hit, they got surrounded and surrendered, which we can't blame them. POW trade, they'll live to fight another day.
It goes to show that Russia has capable troops, it's the leadership roles that have low IQ for war fighting. Where as Ukraine has capable troops, and good leadership. Very fast reaction times on average for Ukrainian units, and I think that's their main advantage against the Russians. Don't let this footage make you lose motivation though, it's war things like this happen you can't win every battle. I pray those guys get home safe from captivity.

Thank you, this is probably more what they mean - that civilian, volunteer support is critical, when the defense establishment should really be able to do and provide all that gear itself, organically.
It seems the structural, institutional and political issues from 2014-16, as regards logistics have somewhat improve. But some ways of doing things (just to "get it done"), driven by avoiding army bureaucracy,  inefficiency and corruption*, have become embedded in the UAs way of war. 
In some ways, whatever, right? The front is supplied and the UA is still fighting.
But the fact that informal, civilian lead supply is currently better than relying on the army material supply doesn't mean that informal, civilian supply is better in a National War of Survival. Its just the best option right now, for now.
For Ukraine to truly beat Russia, the Army Materials Command (or whatever its called) needs to be treated as a strategic priority, its commander must be a front line vet, it must be crush corruption and resist political enrichment schemes, drive home a mission of national survival throughout the organization and it must formally incorporate over those informal, civilian supply networks. Crucially - it must improve on them.
Until it can do that the networks will exist, UKR's logistics will not be able to deliver at the level and speed needed and eventually true victory will slip from the UAs grasp.
 
*including criminalization of the networks. The civilian aspect means theres a lot of opportunities for graft, theft, replacement with crappier options etc, transporting drugs, etc. 

Well you guys are in a tough spot, no doubt.  I am not sure you need to "de-russo-fy" to be honest but you likely need to work on what "Russia" actually means.  Perhaps an evolution as opposed to a revolution.  
Russia needs to work some things out, preferably while not invading everyone who pisses it off - I get the irony of the West saying this - but Russia needs to decide if it is going to be a mature member of the international community or join North Korea in the "contained whacko" box.
I do stand by my point that as far as the current crisis is concerned, Russia only real strategic play left is to remove Putin and his cronies and pin this entire mess on them on the way out.  Fully withdraw, beg for forgiveness, extradite war criminals (and seriously, those actions were not just really immoral, it was really, really dumb), and maybe in a few years after you negotiate oil and gas sales to pay for this mess, we can start thinking about normalization.  I get that this may very well break your nation, but you are in a hole right now that only gets deeper as this thing drags on, seriously the path you guys are on is worse. 
Russia lost this war about a week in.  Ukraine has already figured out how to "win and survive", Russia needs to figure out how to "lose and survive" and do it quickly.  
 

he really said that?  How do people that incredibly ignorant and stupid get to run a whole country????  Oh wait, I live in the US.  Nevermind, dumb question. 
very funny!  LukadumbFunk unfortunately has no style, unlike Benito, who at least could put on a show.  But yes, he is looking like Mussolini right now.

A extremely important thread, where the NCO training provided by the West is actually less impactful than stated by some, if already posted, should be posted again to emphasize the agency of Ukrainians independent of the west in warfighting. 
Interviews with members of the Ukrainian military emphasize that the model of NCOs was too early to be widespread, and that the model of rotating units and conscripts and specialists allowed widespread training to be undertaken despite being a weaker country than Russia for example with more resources and manpower, Ukraine has been able to seemingly equalize the equation. In this sense I think emphasis on unity of purpose and morale is very important.
Russia and Ukraine both have conscripts, but so far the reserves Ukraine is bringing up are showing higher quality than that of Russia's contract personnel.