dan/california

Excellent ,if grim, article. Assuming the author is correct, and that is a largish assumption, there is nothing for it but to redouble support for Ukraine. If the Russian elite cannot be convinced to change course there is no choice but to kill chmobiks until they simply refuse to show up. Ukraine needs what it has needed for months. Abrams, IFVs, ATACAMS, and as much 155 as it takes. Concrete for new ammo plants needs to be poured YESTERDAY. Ukraine needs to be able to put the best part of a KILOMETER of the Kerch Bridge in the water just to make a statement of resolve. We will see what Russian elite opinion is when they simply don't have an army left.

As a small aside the board might need a lot more server capacity if a vast number of people get cut off from what is currently their primary source of information.

While Twitter is still here, this is perhaps the best propaganda parody of the war.

https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/the-case-against-negotiations-with-russia Excellent article!

I keep arguing for. a Ukrainian version of the Shaheed 136. Preferably directed at the Moscow electricity system in large numbers. But people keep telling me that would be uncivilized.

I had a truly awful week once when the company that made it did that with a ski lift motor drive. Shipped it with all the safeties locked out for factory testing. The bleeping encryption on the thing was so strong they had to fly the fix to outermost nowhere on a USB key. Total bleeper of a hassle. The purpose of the encryption was of course to prevent mistakes just like that one... The number of dead Russian officers from major to colonel recently seems of the charts even by the out of control standards of this war. They are going to wind up with mobiks leading mobiks, that surely won't cause any issues. I was more or less certain Ukraine would do a Shaheed 136 but better rather quickly. I am so happy to be correct. Given Russian competence at things like staying sober enough to interpret a radar screen I expect them to be quite useful. Hopefully the are turning out several hundred a month soon. Sort of amazing that Russia would still be basing Su-34s in Crimea given the threat level. But happily the the Russian military can't even SPELL learning....

The Ukrainians have made some mistakes related to this accident at the Polish border. I do not believe they are significant mistakes, but they are perhaps revealing. First and foremost they reveal how stressed the Ukrainian leadership is. Zelensky and his government are fighting an existential war with just barely enough support. The just barely part is because NATO is chicken$##&& and unwilling to further provoke Russia, or other than Poland and the Baltics, take the slightest strategic risk in terms of stock depletion. When something went bang in Poland, in the middle of an attack that was intended to utterly cripple Ukraine's power grid, Ukraine reacted emotionally just this once, instead of playing the rock steady good soldier. Given the possibility of finally getting FULL support instead of the carefully calculated flow they have been given. That careful calculation let's remember guarantees many more months of grinding, brutal war. And a butcher's bill for every day of it. Getting ahead of themselves with a flare of hope we might pull our heads out of our A&%$, and or consider dead and tortured Ukrainians as important as Poles or Frenchmen, was a mistake. But bleep me it was an understandable one. Ukraine needs more support, it needs five billion a month in financial support without a desperate daily scramble to round it up. It needs two hundred more tubes of 155, and perhaps every round of 155 ammo in Europe. IT NEEDS ATACAMS, and permission to strike rail infrastructure in Russia. It needs several hundred top tier IFVs even more than it needs Leopard/Abrams. Or NATO can start firing cruise missiles in quantity and end this in three days. Or we can keep being chicken$^$# and letting Ukrainians die and freeze. Opinion is worth what you paid, but I stand by it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/magazine/ukraine-trains.html Great article!

Both of you gentlemen have orders of magnitude more proximity to decision makers, and perhaps more information, than I do. What is your opinion of extend the ground based air defense bubble from Poland to as far into Ukraine as is technically feasible. Push radars and launchers right the Polish Ukrainian border, and provide coverage as deep into Ukraine as as possible. It would let Ukraine move at least some assets east to increase the density of the defenses there. It would not require putting pilots at risk or any direct attacks on Russian forces other than the missiles they are shooting at innocent people. Obviously it would irritate the Russians to no end, and it is a fairly large step diplomatically. Of course that is the point.

Your Polish and I am not, your opinion of the Polish Government carries at least eighteen times more weight than mine. I was also less than than impressed with the current Polish Government right up until 2/25. But since then, my impression, from the outermost suburbs of Seattle, is that they have done a good job supporting Ukraine. I have no opinion on their current internal communication strategy, or much of anything else. Except they have ordered an enormous new army. I am sure they are playing for a wartime, rally around the flag boost. But any government would, hopefully they lose an election shortly after Russia gets booted out of Ukraine. It happened to Churchill, it can happen to anyone.

Maybe not, it is worth getting NATOs ducks in row instead of putting out something they will have to take back. Obviously that could change if Russia does something completely batbleep crazy like shooting more missiles anywhere near Poland. But as it stands a response with twice or four times the weight tomorrow is worth more than a light one today. And I m the guy who has been advocating for NATO to just join the war from the beginning, and still do.

Shipping Ukraine a hundred ATACAMS seems like a perfectly reasonable response.

Now THAT might mean something. Intentionally targeting Electrical infrastructuure in Poland is i believe "an act of war" in pretty much every book, ever. Do we know how close they got? Would it have hit the powerline if wasn't for the Ukrainian S-300? I realize we might not get that answer for a day or three.

Definitely a god level drone operator. You would think the Russians would get the idea that this isn't working out and go home.

The new Precision Strike Missile for the the Himars would do nicely. Lights out in Kyiv=lights out in Moscow, and this #&$$ would stop. That or every time Russia does one of these terror attacks NATO fires 200-300 cruise missiles at every significant Russian Target in Ukraine. A KILOMETER of the Kerch bridge bridge in the water, and every other rail bridge in Russian occupied Ukraine would also make a nice neat statement. Or we can just start systematically evacuating Ukrainian cities.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/12/putin-russia-must-lose-ukraine-war-imperial-future/671891/ She is most of the way to team Kamil, it can't be fixed, only disassembled.

If it as info op they are pushing it hard...

The Baltics understand that the time and place to beat the Russians for a generation or two is in Ukraine, and right now.

Well put, even by your usual high standards.

They haven't made many mistakes so far. Himars reaches a LONG way from the most southerly bit of the right bank. And they could just be making a credible feint, too.

Once you get towards the end of the river delta, say around Zaberyne, could any amount of water from the dam have much effect? If the Russians let a lot of water out it might just interfere with their own efforts If the AFU tried to get established on the P57 maybe? Obviously ambitious, but maybe the mobiks morale is down far enough to really try something. One special forces team in Skadovs'k might induce blind panic in the Russian command structure. Even if it was just long enough to induce them to make a mistake somewhere else. Edit: Cross posted with Haiduk saying sort of the same thing.

He is clearly an optimist. But sometimes he makes good maps. And he clearly spends a ton of time reading Russian Telegram channels. Which is useful when Ukraine has discovered the news blackout. I wouldn't move a brigade based on his info. What is your opinion of Noel? Also is that machine gun on the far right older than I am?

The WILDLY optimistic angle is that it ~60 miles from there to Crimean choke point. Taking that would all but win the war. Not saying the can DO it. Even a decent attempt might force the Russians to make a weak spot somewhere else to stop them. Multiple indications the Ukrainians want to keep pushing while the pushing is good.

One possibility is that the Ukrainians are running a little info op to mess with the Russians heads. The other possibility is that the real reason Zelensky was in Kherson is to shake hands with the troops who were about to REALLY cross the Dnipro, and try to end this war by Christmas.