dan/california

Today's ISW up. A lot of it has already been discussed on the board. However, In addition to excellent maps they have, a LOT of detail on which Russian units are where. I posted the other interesting bit above. Russia is all but shanghaiing Central Asian immigrants. It also says a lot about conditions in the Stans that they still HAVE any central Asian migrants.

The above is from the same WaPo article referenced above. The Ukrainians have been begging for these rockets for well over a year. It is my understanding the current U.S. plan for its stocks is to pay a bunch of money to destroy them. The fact that aren't already there by the trainload is a case study in how we could have done better. The guy calling for more in person reconnaissance needs to be invited to walk across an overgrown wheat field in the dark that has been covered in whatever the Pentagon uses to simulate those nasty little petal mines. After he sets fifteen or twenty of them off ask him for his revised opinion. If the Pentagon does not have a decent training simulator for them that is its own huge red flag, and might explain said idiotic opinion. More generally the U.S. keeps asking Ukraine to fight like the U.S. Air Force is fully involved in this war. If Ukraine could drop 500 JDAMS a day, instead of ten, they would be using a lot less artillery.

This wikipedia article about what happened in France is worth your time.

All of Western Europe went thru it after WW2, it was bad, but they didn't line people up against walls wholesale. Hopefully Ukraine can do as well or better. Not going to get perfection here. A wholesale but only mildly violent effort to expedite the departure of the worst actors would help. Put a very unpleasant note on the door of the assistant police chief that was too helpful to the Russians after it has become obvious the AFU are coming to town but before they actually get there. It is notable that Ukraine is in no danger of taking any Russian territory, so these folks have a "safer" place to go than a lot of collaborators the beaten side. Hopefully most of them will have the sense to take the out. Ukrainian propaganda certainly points a lot of this regularly. The way avoid all of these problem was to admit Ukraine to NATO before the Russians invaded, that water, and far to many casualties are well under the bridge unfortunately.

Worth adding that the weather has been completely screwy this year in a LOT of places. Ukraine could have impassible mud in the late September, or bone dry ground until nearly Christmas. I wouldn't bet against either one.

By Petreaus and Kagan. I agree with every word, more or less.

Really hoping that becomes a WAS any time now.

One of the bigger questions I have is does the Ukrainian government have good records from Crimea pre 2014 takeover? If all the records were on paper in Crimea they a have been bleeped with beyond use. But one miracle at a time, they have to take it back first.

These two posts seem to encapsulate the fundamental disagreement at the highest policy level. Approximately half the experts think the Russian state is fragile enough to just shatter if it is booted in the bum to hard. The other half thinks most of the Russian population is to unmotivated to have a proper civil war, and will just accept orders from whoever is occupying the Kremlin after a bit of gangland unpleasantness. One of the experts on this podcast, a native Russian speaker, argues strongly for the to demotivated camp. His take was that the coup demonstrated a desperate desire not to get involved by almost everyone. Only a ~quarter of Wagner actually signed on for the party. Almost all of the actual Russian military was to paralyzed with indecision to do much of anything. Some of them probably preferred Wagner, and some of them probably preferred Putin. All they actually did was get drunk, pretend they were drunk, or and/or mysteriously lose their phones.

I realize you are correct that the situation rife with all sort of bad possibilities. First thing first though, this would be a very good problem to have. It implies the Russians have flat out lost. The second is that Ukraine has a whole ministry dedicated to thinking about these sorts of dilemmas in advance. Every thing I have seen them put out seems measured, intelligent and thoughtful. In particular their was an announcement that Ukrainian civilians under occupation should accept whatever Russian paperwork they need to get by, including passports. They promised to sort it all out later with maximum forbearance. I don't think there is anything else we can ask them to do at this point. In short the Ukrainians appear to be trying to emulate the U.S. occupation of Germany after WW2, not some of our later errors.

Indeed, this documentary appears to have been one of those successful operations.

As soon as that first PGM goes off, they were PGMs or crazy good shooting, the infantry just start running. It would seem the vatniks have learned the signature for when the Ukrainians are serious about taking a particular spot, and just bug out when they see it. It didn't seem to do this lot much good. I don't think most of them had time to regret their life choices properly. Edit: Terrible news about the pilots, The price Ukraine pays for the West being slow and timid just keeps going up.

Trying not to get shot and left in a ditch somewhere near the front by the FSB? Putin seems like he is sort of over RuNat criticism. This guy might be even more likely to fall out of a window, since Putin seems to view any hint of independence by the L/DPR just as dimly as he views criticism of his war plan. The only explanation for picking Finland though is that he thought he had fake papers that would hold up. Not many places he would get less sympathy.

Russians don't seem to like it when they are the side without artillery.

Their are multilayered information ops being run by both sides, there may more than two sides. At this exact moment I am not believing a whole lot of anything except geolocated footage that doesn't have nine obvious cuts in it. Personally I am currently applying this filter to anything that originates in Washington, Kyiv, or Moscow. There are just to many reasons for any all of them to be less than truthful right this second. Triply so with Prig dead and The Pickle enjoying the comforts of some FSB sub basement cell. Edit: To be sure, they both deserve even worse...

Senator Romney on Ukraine. Absolutely 100% solid.

Worth a read in full. The optimist case laid out in detail with quite a bit of evidence.

And proper supporting equipment is even more important than the actual manpower. If Russia is out of jammers, out of artillery that put a round within a kilometer of the aim point, and out of counter-battery radar, heavily manned trenches just run up the casualty count. I still think Ukraine has gotten it more right than wrong, concentrating to soon and to obviously just lets the the Russians concentrate as well. I will also point out that Ukraine and the U.S. have run at least one first class info op about how the Ukrainians were going to attack in this one place, and only this one place...

Ukraines best hack yet. The broke into some brand of cctv cameras that have speakers. they played the Ukrainian national anthem and recorded people reactions. Absolutely hilarious, a lot of them were terrifed they would be blamed and had bought a one way ticket to Siberia, or Bakmuht.

Stil waiting for that moment when Ukraine manages to "hack" that particular channel and land a largw scale airstrike in the Russian's front line.

Fingers crossed!

Wagner is certainly much weaker than it was. But it is also true that Putin just broke a bargain, spectacularly, with a group that has a very well founded reputation for killing people for a tiny fraction of that level of disrespect, or no reason at all. Two bullets each for Putin and Lukashenko remain one the best bargains in human history.

The best case scenario is the the Russians pull so many of the Russians very limited mobile forces towards a developing break thru towards at Tokomak, and then Ukraine breaks thru towards Mariupol as well. All of sudden every Russian in between has some very hard choices to make. And if I can figure that out, I am quite sure the AFU General Staff can. It is quite possible that Russia has just purged everyone on their side with that level of military understanding.