dan/california

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/world/europe/russia-soldier-casualties.html A long sad story about how Putin's war is wrecking Russia utterly.

Big Serge is the anti-Steve. Time is on Russia's side. A complete reorganization of the Russian military is a mere six months work, and in the mean time it is the Ukrainians bleeding at a rate they cannot tolerate. One of them is very wrong, lets just say I am betting on Steve. it does seem to be a coherently argued alternate view. LLF does he have stuff alll the way to 2/24/2022? I am very curious what he thought before the war kicked off?

Can i add this to my forum Sig line?

Truly crazy suggestion, could Wagner be bought? Pay them in diamonds to just run for the Russian border and whatever their plan is for a mini state. Let the AFU just pour through gap to split the Donbas?

You have to include artillery ammo and barrel wear in the total cost calculations. If the Russians simply don't have the guns and ammo to oppose a big Ukrainian push in six weeks when the ground dries, Bakmuht is going to look like a VERY expensive purchase. And they don't have it yet, either...

There is an interesting side question about Japan and Kamchatka. If Russia was really cracking up the Japanese would pay some incomprehensibly large bribes to get Kamchatka back. Not to mention promising to turn the entire Island into a construction site. The Free Republic of the Kuriles" might have to last a whole month as an independent country before it was welcomed back to the bosom of the Rising Sun with literal cargo ships full of Yen. I have a completely silly hang up with Koffman. He sounds like a crooked detective from Newark. I cannot get this thought/image out of my head when I listen to him. Lately he has been pretty strong on the idea that the Russians burned themselves out in Siverodonetsk, and never really recovered. Can't say i disagree with that. I really discount almost everything about conditions/plans on the Ukrainian side since the perfectly coordinated info op before the Kharkiv offensive. Maskirova is yet another Russian concept only the Ukrainians seem to understand. Do the Nordics/Baltics have football chants to the effect that" we have the hottest prime mister", nah, nah?

Two points 1) Putin's silliness with calling this disaster a "Special Military Operation" instead of a war probably makes every Russian in Ukraines legal situation worse. The pilot may be a case in point. 2) The Ukrainians haven't shot him or anything. So it is likely as not he will get rolled into the prisoner exchange that will be part of whatever treaty/armistice ends this thing. After all he is only accused of a property crime.

Send it all straight to Ukraine! ???????!! Exactly, who is important enough to get this ride and not under 97 kinds of sanctions and indictment at the Hague?

Its a hard fight, but I trust the AFU General Staff is doing the math.

It is worth noting that are really only two routes in and out of Crimea, and one of them is within standard GMLRS range of Kherson city. So if the Ukrainians could induce a real panic there is at least a chance to turn it into replay of the highway of death.

Allow me to clarify. 200,000/12= 16500 +/- per month. Obviously that is smoothing out a lot of variation. Although the low point was in summer 2022, and casualties went WAY up when they started committing mobiks that had been trained very poorly or not at all, and have just stayed on the high side since. It is a crazy number, but not apparently enough to get the point across. I admit that a 100,00 in a month is truly optimistic. The AFU would have to smash through Melitipol and on to the access points to Crimea faster than the Russians cold withdraw, and trap a really big batch of them against the Dnipro with the AFU on both sides. But it is going to take something close to that to get. the Russians to quit and go home, unless Putin has a stroke, and the new guy has few working brain cells.

Would you accept the best estimate of the current NATO commander?

Seven things I think are important, and I don't know how good our info is on any of them. 1) To what extent have the ultranationalist quietly co-opted the mid levels of the security services? 2) To what extent is anyone besides the ultranationalist willing to really fight for power? Clearly the people at the very top of the regime are, and so far the apparatus has followed orders, does that hold? 3) Is the war making the ultranationalist stronger or weaker? I mean at least some of the real fire breathers have been killed in Ukraine. 4) Is the war convincing what passes for the broad middle that the ultras are the solution, or the problem? 5) Is there actually real separation between the ultras, and the FSB/GRU? 6) Are the FSB and GRU cultivating separate ultra communities as their "private" foot soldiers? 7) How is the relationship between the FSB and the GRU anyway? Grigb it is great to have you chiming in again! any chance to could opine on any of these, at least very briefly?

As is always the case in these scenarios the worst actors probably have the most mature plans to take advantage of the situation. Ghirkin and Prigozhin come immediately to mind. Although they might waste their first mover advantage trying to kill each other.

Out of likes, excellent as always!

I do, and have always, used the official issued Ukrainian figures. I do assume that the number includes killed and wounded. But when you consider the fact that wounded men either suck up a ton of resources, or add themselves to the dead column they are a problem either way. Said Ukrainian numbers are running between 500 and a thousand per day. I am sure these numbers are not perfect, but I don't think there are any perfect, or even really good numbers. I doubt the Russian's have good numbers given the lying and dysfunction in their system. We may NEVER know the real numbers on the Russian side.

Earlier conclusions/speculations were they had probably replaced a 25mm auto cannon with a completely obsolete/unavailable ammunition with 14.5 mm heavy machine guns. So no timed, proximity, or other fancy fuses to help in the counter UAV role.

Last post on the nuke thing until April, I promise. But you just gave detailed description of how Russia's nuclear systems could get completely bleeped. Somebody says boss we need more tritium, it has a half life, leaks, and so on. He says what it actually cost plus the usual bit for him. Then the tritium production system has a bad month. He already spent his extra, and some of money he planed to actually use for tritium on blow and worse ideas. Now he ether has to report this to a higher up who is dyspeptic on his best day, or bribe the next guy down to keep very quiet. If he does get caught, and goes out the window the next guy is going to have the same incentives. Even the new guy gets a handle on the tritium problem he goes through the same cycle on any of dozens of other vey finicky, very expensive processes. And, and, and... You describe the cycle perfectly.

In the absence the War in Ukraine, it could fail slowly for fifty years. But that is not the current reality. The Ukrainians are, by virtually all accounts about to to take a VERY hard swing at breaking the land bridge. If they really break through they are going to exploit to the the absolute limit of their resources. The Russians have withstood ~20,000 kia/seriously wounded per month. Can they they withstand a 100,000 month? Russian military cadets are already singing songs that glorify their impending certain death in Ukraine. When will the mobiks who serve under them just stop following orders?

Bleep me, what was the calibration process like when you made it "work"? Well stated, and right on cue... And right on cue Mark Galeotti has some new stuff out, he seems to know as much about it as anyone writing in english.

See below... Okay, let us assume that Grigb's source, translation, and so on are correct for purposes of this discussion. You have just stated in the same morning that Russia's military is on the verge of epic failure. You have stated that the Russian state is simply clueless about what to do next, they simply have no idea how to lose this war. So if the Ukrainians smash the Russian army into flaming dust bunnies the way they deserve, and it seems as likely as not they will. Does the Russian regime survive? Does the Russian state survive? They are not quite the same thing. Or are we on an inevitable track towards something at least as dramatic as the Bolshevik revolution?

If I ever new that I forgot it, but wow that was was a missed opportunity. Actually I must ever have known it, because I can't imagine I would forget that one.