dan/california

Putin's entire strategy at this point comes down lasting until the U.S. election in 2024 Putin's only meaningful chance to salvage even a little of what he wants out of this war is this. And since the adults in the room seem aware of this... So Putin is betting on the children's' table. The FSB, and it Chinese equivalent, are going to do their absolute utmost to drag the isolationist wing of MAGA over the finish line. DeSantis just outright said he would abandon Ukraine, and implied he was quite willing to throw Taiwan over the side. I don't know how else to interpret his remark about "Not worth irritating the Chinese". The stakes in the election couldn't be any plainer. Biden clearly understands this in theory, i just can't figure out why he is still bleeping around with things like ATACMS, and DPICM. He just bet the farm on winning in Ukraine, that means putting the Kerch bridge in the water, and simply killing more mobiks than Russian morale can stand. M26 rockets deleting grid square after grid square would move that right along. Every bit of Ukraine that has been fought over is going to have to de-mined at enormous cost and effort, that hip sailed months ago.

Really interesting ISW today, a lot of discussion of the attempted integration/takeover of the LNR/DNR forces by the Russian MOD. ISW seems to think this has a fairly large chance of going badly at a time when nothing much is going well from a Russian perspective.

A lot of the Rand people still seem to think Russia has a magical rabbit in a hat somewhere. Russia could use WMD, or Strike Poland, or launch a major attack on Western undersea infrastructure. Is there a fourth choice I am missing? Because all three of these basically involve declaring war on NATO. Since they are the second best army in Ukraine right now, that seems unwise.

Apologies for repeating myself, but Google translate is what makes this possible. It has had an enormous effect on this war.

OMG that is funny!

Oh no, we are professionals at it. One of the worst things Putin has done from his point of view is make us look up, and at him.

Barring an attack of sense in Beijing, and the opposite seems to be happening, the lines of a new cold war are pretty clear. China, Russia, and Iran seem to moving towards forming a totalitarian block, with the U.S., EU, Japan, Australia, and South Korea on the other side. I think The_Capt spoke at some length about the extent to which the U.S. is twisting arms to get ducks in a row. Edit: Just to be clear Aragorn was responding to the other Dan.

U.S. seems pretty convinced China is going to start shipping Russia real military aid for use in Ukraine. The U.S.-Chinese trade relations are not going to hold if that happens. We really do need to put a division of Marines on Taiwan, and end this whole ambiguity thing once and for all.

UKR has almost certainly decided to wait for dry weather in late Spring for this very reason. There may be a lot of other reasons as well, but I two cents is that they never saw a weather forecast they like enough to pull the trigger. If the Russians want to be stupid Ukraine is happy to stack them like cordwood. The same warm winter in Europe that arguably broke Ukraines momentum on the battlefield also completely bleeped Putin's plan to freeze out the entire E.U.. I would argue Ukraine is better off on the whole, but it depends on what you think Ukraine could have done in December with a really hard and dependable freeze. I do give huge points to the AFU for taking the weather as it came, instead of sticking to a plan that would not have worked. Of course the existence of that plan is an assumption on my part. I am waiting for the after war books by the principles like everyone else.

The Pickle is profoundly unimpressed with the Russian MOD/army.

I suspect that something is Belarus, full stop. Lukashenko's, hopefully unpleasant, demise, and even a medium sized distraction in Belarus would be good for Ukraine.

The whole editorial is outstanding. Now write your Congressperson/MP AGAIN.

So here is the interesting question, what happens if Putin simply has Lukashenko shot/tossed out a window. Does Putin get a quick and painless complete take over of Belarus? Or a second front in a war he is already losing? The fact Lukashenko is still alive implies Putin isn't as sure of the answer as he would like.

It certainly implies a certain failure to communicate with the Ukrainian forces as well. But the fact that there isn't a factory in Poland, and another one in the U.S. Midwest turning out slightly militarized versions of theses drones in real quantity is simply a massive failure. The evidence simply couldn't be any clearer. It may be that this the thing the Ukrainian MOD thinks can be supplied by charity/volunteer space most effectively? And they want to save the budget for other things?

Ukraine not having enough night vision and drones at this point in the war is simply a failure by the U.S./NATO. I now know what is in this weeks letter to my Congressmen besides ATACMS. On the positive side if bad weather that lowers drones usage is when the Russians are making progress it really does imply Ukraine is slowly winning the artillery/ISR battle overall. All good thoughts to guys in the trenches.

The one man part is the fundamental issue. When there is no way to tell the top guy he is about to bleep it up completely, or even tell that he HAS bleeped it up completely, BAD things happen. That why Xi is so worrisome right now....

OMG this is funny, also very good. Good to point out how DIFFERENT things might be five years after this war than they were five years before it. See below Steve's point is interesting, and mostly true, although I think I have seen one or two others. But the other thing this video makes clear is that the Russians have not learned a bleeping thing in a year of grinding combat. They are STILL doing the single vehicle, straight down the road charge with no infantry support, and no suppression to speak of. And then of course they are on fire. As many people have stated the Russian military just isn't a learning culture, and that is why they are going to lose.

Another article about how Russia is systematically stripping men from the countryside. They appear to to have started with the most remote and most non Russian places intentionally.

Yes, VERY! But you have to keep in mind that the Russian agricultural system has been subjected to multiple more or less horrific reorganizations for at least a ~160 years. When the serfs were "freed" in 1861 they stuck with great deal of debt to compensate the landowners. Then there were the manifest horrors of collectivization, that resulted in the Holodomor in Ukraine, and wasn't exactly pleasant anywhere else in the Soviet Union. This of course was followed by the utterly corrupt breakdown of the Soviet system in the late eighties and early nineties. I am not saying there are not some more or less self sufficient settlements and farmsteads scattered across Russia, but they are nowhere close to a majority. The ones that were are probably a lot less so after their military age males were harvested like live stock to feed the meat grinder of this war. I saw an article months ago about a village somewhere out past the Urals that had HALF its male population called up. The only question was whether it starved quickly, or managed to whither more slowly if some of the men's military pay actually made it back home. Like this one

I still wonder if the strategic rocket forces consists of duct tape, trash cans and Swiss bank accounts? They sure as bleep just faked it everywhere else. If someone tells you to fire an ICBM you and everyone else is (&%^%^&&, and absent that order no one will ever know. Between a missile that you really never want to use, and nice Chalets for long your term mistresses and pretty good Moscow Apartments for the short term ones, it is actually the rational choice. Yes I know we don't know that, ect., ect...

I am an inveterate Euro-basher, Scholz most of all but.... This was a massive effort, and extraordinarily important.

The happiest explanation is the the UKR finally has ENOUGH artillery to shatter the actual Russian assault forces, and hit deeper at the same time. That would probably kill whatever offensive potential the Russian army has left rather quickly.

This was the best one I have listened to from them by quite a lot. Some of them are....unwilling to say much. The only thing I didn't like about this episode was that it didn't give the final performance numbers I really wanted. How many drones can these new laser/microwave toys kill in a minute, at what range, and how long can they keep doing before they have to go drive into a pond to cool down or some similar maneuver. Joking about the pond, a little. I can actually see this kind of system being set up to take external cooling water when it is available. Oh, and every prototype in existence should be in Ukraine proving it can kill Orlan tens in quantity.

The kindest thing that can be said about the Russian command at Vuhledar is that they thought they had more bodies than than the Ukrainians had AT mines and ammunition. They were incorrect.

The people who think Russia are going to win are reading history wrong. The comparison that the Russians are fighting much less effectively than the Germans in their 1918 spring offensive is particularly insightful.