Tux

I agree. Not sure you’d get much more than a blank stare from Russian command, though.

Surely even if they're a bit harder to train for, maintain and supply you might still want to use them up first in an attritional war? As I said a few days ago, think of it the other way 'round: If you're going to be left with any tanks after this war, which ones would you rather be left with?

Does no-one else think that this is one of the more sensible and right-headed decisions the Russians have made, during this war? If the Russian expectation (practically their intention, as far as I can see) is that they will lose a large number of tanks, then surely your 50 year old tank stock is exactly the stock you should run down first? What else is it for? I'm not saying it doesn't expose various kinds of 'flaws' in the Russian way of working and I'm not saying they haven't lost embarassing numbers of modern vehicles but I really don't think the reappearance of T-55s in Russian frontline service is necessarily a sign of desperation, at all.

Why did you have to say it out loud?! It's only a matter of time, now.

Ok, well I don't want to act unfairly in responding to a person who is deciding not to post any more on the thread so I will offer to continue this discussion with kevinkin in DMs, if he's interested. However I did want to address some recent posts here because I think it speaks to a wider misunderstanding that is distressingly common when discussing complicated issues and has led to similar conflicts on this thread in the past. Kevin, if you're still reading this (and as I say, you may respond to me in DM if you like - I don't want to provoke you into a further argument in this thread), it's not the positions you hold but your unwillingness to properly explore them which frustrates. This leads to you gish-galloping your way through three or four 'positions' in each post. Then, when someone tries to pin down and engage with a single one (like I and others did with 'stare down Putin' and The_Capt did with 'win the war in 4 weeks') we don't get much in response. I tried to encourage you to expand on the 'staring' position, to see if there was anything to actually discuss there (I do believe that you believe you are raising fair points) but your response to a list of things the US did with the intelligence they had was to ask what the US did with the intelligence they had. I mean, at my most charitable I could assume that it was a rhetorical question but without any elaboration from you about why the previous answers to such a "rhetorical" question might not count... Mate, do you not see how that might quickly become frustrating? The below quote is demonstrative of another problem: People should be aware that "single points" don't exist in the real world. If one is trying to drill down to the truth of a matter then dragging multiple different topics together is unavoidable and necessary because ultimately everything is interacting, everywhere, all the time. The_Capt, in a very particular sense, did write "paragraphs to make a single point" but that was precisely because addressing a single point requires exploration of many others. That was his point! In another, slightly less confusing sense, The_Capt's point intent was to just hint at the actual time, effort and patience which would be required to actually start answering one of kevinkin's one-liner questions by pointing out all the other questions which would have to be asked and answered at the same time. My friendly advice to kevinkin or anyone else who is considering "just asking questions" or raising "points" which go against the "group-think" on this board: Ask yourself the question Decide what you think the answer might be Think of and ask yourself at least 3 different questions directly related to the answer to your initial question Decide what you think the answers might be to each of those 3 Consider the implications of the combined 4 answers you are now holding in your mind Ask yourself whether they make sense together, as the beginnings of a coherent potential "truth" If they do make sense together and they contrast with what you perceive as the dominant viewpoint on this thread or elsewhere then you may have an interesting point. Go ahead and make it, simultaneously making your case by including your thinking about the 3 other 'satellite' questions. This demonstrates the way you are thinking. It is helpful, interesting and it will be appreciated by those who are minded to respond. If they don't make sense together, try again*. If you are still unable to find a sensible "truth" which explains them all, that's great because you may have an interesting question. Go ahead and ask it, simultaneously including your thinking about the 3 other 'satellite' questions and what you are finding difficult to understand. This demonstrates the way you are thinking. It is helpful, interesting and it will be appreciated by those who are minded to respond. Listen to/read the response(s) you get, think about them and engage with the precise thoughts that people raise, doing your best to help people relate the discussion back to your original question. Sound too much like hard work? Welcome to a discussion about a very complicated issue. People spend lifetimes studying, thinking about and writing about this stuff and it's not because they are overly verbose or for want of anything better to do. *In particular it may be helpful to think about answers which do not involve the USA. Only a very small minority of real-world global decisions are made with the USA in mind, so you'd be surprised how often this might help.

..and if the likely targets have anything they can do to escape/counter the Lancet in time. That was my main thought when watching the video: the drone operator may have been shouting “Lancet! ****ing Lancet!” but I bet the tank commander was shouting back “What the **** do you expect me to do about it?!”

Agreed, although I wonder whether the negative impact deep mud may have on the effectiveness of Ukrainian artillery might be more of an issue? Come to think of it, I assume it would be an especially bad idea to keep firing DPICM at targets in ‘soft ground’… Still, I see your point and won’t be shocked if Ukraine try to keep the pressure on all through autumn and into winter. Once/if the ground freezes everything speeds up again anyway (except the drones). So, yeah, “30 to 45” days sounds like a reasonable guess based on certain well-known assumptions, to be taken with a healthy lump of salt.

Quick note: the above was unnecessary and disrespectful, so I apologise for that.

Alright, I’ll bite (just this once) in case clearing it up once and for all might stop it being posted 3-4 times a day… What does this even mean? Amongst all the thoughts you post (which are honestly sometimes pretty hard to untangle) this one seems to come up more often than anything else. It’s an analogy, right? ‘staring down Putin’? What is it actually an analogy for? The article in your own post points out that “The United States thus sought to leverage intelligence in a manner to convince allies of the imminent threat and, to a lesser degree, dissuade Moscow from acting, while signaling that it had deep insights into the Kremlin’s plans.” So the US basically told Russia they knew about their plans, told all their allies, told Ukraine and mobilised the alliance we see today to implement unprecedented sanctions against Russia and unprecedented financial and military support for Russia’s intended enemy. I’m honestly not sure what other reasonable measures could have been taken at the time. What else do you mean by “stare Putin down”? Oh and, fair warning: if your response mentions B-52s or a no-fly zone I will be forced to conclude that you’re either trolling or basing your suggestions on video game experience, at which point I’ll apologise to the rest of the board for bringing it up and duck out.

Did you read the link? From what I saw the headline was slightly misleading. Milley said “There's still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days' worth of fighting weather left, so the Ukrainians aren't done.” I think it’s the headline writer who has turned that into “Ukrainian offensive could only have 30 days left”. Not helpful, for sure. In any case nobody knows how long the offensive has left and even Milley wasn’t trying to imply that his estimate is a hard-and-fast number. We all know that wet weather (not the cold weather the article-writer seems hung up on) could force a halt due to mud. If for some reason it doesn’t get too muddy then the weather may not halt the offensive at all. And of course the offensive could run out of steam all on its own before the next 30 days are up. Time passes. Things change. It’s a non-story.

I always assumed it was because it’s basically impossible to detect and stop someone from operating a drone up to approximately that height. They don’t take long to get up, carry out their mission and then land so, as we’re still finding out today, there’s really no way of denying the airspace to anyone who wants to use it. Once above c. 2,000ft AAA and SAM systems might start to be able to detect and shoot at things and at some point hostile aircraft would become more of a threat, too. Keen to hear what the case actually was, though.

I guess when you’re not actually at war though it’s difficult to justify making the kind of sacrifices countries which are at war are forced to make in order to achieve those speeds? Not that I don’t think things could have happened at least a bit faster but you get my point.

Or that, if you’re going to lose tanks anyway, why not lose your oldest ones? Or if you prefer: which tanks would you rather be left with once the war is over? I dunno, it just always made sense to me, to be honest. T-90s get blown up almost as quickly as T-55s so yeah, roll out those battered old T-55s!

I have to believe that our collective militaries are smart enough to have started down this road months and months ago. It’s surely that obvious. As mentioned this was discussed on the thread months ago and I seem to remember The_Capt and others making it quite clear that the major benefit to Ukraine would be the simple fact of free, safe basic training for a larger number of recruits than they could train on their own (and maybe some cultural advantages in terms of low-level initiative and flexibility being encouraged). Otherwise there was absolutely no reason to think NATO training would somehow be better suited to this war than Ukrainian training.

Exactly that - they have deliverately removed all the soft options to make us negotiate with a hard Russian loss. Because we all know it is not just the Russians who will have to deal with the fallout from that. I want to emphasise that I absolutely do not think we should back away from helping Ukraine win this war. I'm all in for dealing with the fallout. At this point it's the least we can do. I just hope (and don't doubt) that we have some extremely bright people mapping the hell out of our potential future option-spaces as we speak.

Yes, quite possibly. I suppose that was part of my point - unless we are very sure about our alternative explanations for their inaction we have to consider their apparent lack of concern when assessing current events. I do think there are persuasive alternative explanations, though, such as the previously-mentioned idea that they are politically unable to act. As always, time will tell.

Indeed. It's just bloody-minded, mafia-style brinkmanship but they've removed their own options for compromise and are now daring Ukraine and the West to push them into the void and see what happens. At the moment, as you say, the fact that they are intent on making their defeat as painful as possible for everyone (including themselves) simply betrays the fact that they are no longer negotiating with their own defeat. Instead they are trying to make the rest of us do it for them. They want us and Ukraine to decide not to win because we don't want Russia to lose. So perhaps what needs to happen is that Putin's Russkiy Mir needs to be discredited in other ways even before Ukraine win militarily, in order to remove that psychological and cultural 'safe space' that he and too many other Russians will otherwise retreat to if and when they lose. How many Stans and African nations can be tempted into visibly closer economic relations with Europe, the US or even (at this point) China? Can Ukrainian/western security services put together an expose and humiliation of Putin himself? What exactly did he and that horse get up to after the famous shirtless ride in the wilderness? Has he been modelling aspects of his private life on Lavrentiy Beria? It's the mythos behind it all that needs to be attacked in order to properly win this war.

As a complete left-field hypothetical I don't think it needs to take up much of the thread's time but, since this is the second time you've brought it up: No. Never. A world in which Putin's Russia accepts this idea, Western European nations accept this idea and in which this idea is even close to workable (not to mention ethical, moral or even legal) just doesn't exist.

Hmmm. I think the last couple of months are tea leaves. Dark, soggy, sinister tea leaves. Unfortunately, as Centurian mentioned, we probably won't know what they foretold until after the fact.

There was the BBC article from yesterday which noted the breakdown in diplomatic relations over the last decade or so and highlighted how utterly futile it became to try and talk to Russian diplomats from December 2021 onwards. Generally I am sure there are some channels open, somewhere. Let's bear in mind though that it's how Ukraine and Russia are communicating which matters more in this war.

In response to the above and the half-dozen other contributions around this same topic: Absolutely, I agree that Russia do not behave in a way that we would consider rational but I don't agree that we saw no signs of panic at other stages of the war. It was probably unhelpful of me to use the word "panic" but I didn't mean to imply that I expect to see people running, screaming through the streets of Moscow or bursting into tears on national TV. What we have seen though is that, when Russia thought their northern front was about to collapse in Spring 2022 they proactively retreated and wrote it off, as you say, as an "operational adjustment" or even a bloody "show of good faith". Russia then kicked off a major (though partial) mobilisation effort last September, when it was all going tits up around Kharkiv and Kherson. They also implemented snap "referenda" in the occupied oblasts and even formally "annexed" them into the Russian Federation. Of course the latter was a bluff and hasn't had any lasting impact but that's the point: it was a desperate attempt to make Ukraine and the West second-guess how Russia would respond if Kherson was taken and a hope-against-hope that Ukraine would consequently halt their advance. It was always going to fall flat but they tried it anyway. I would then also argue that the whole Nova Kakhovka dam fiasco (whether it was accidentally blown or whatever) was probably a response to the threat Ukraine was posing to Russia's probably wafer-thin western flank. The fact is we haven't seen anything like the above more recently. Ukraine seem to have been gradually, painfully fixing themselves up, countering Russian threats and expanding the domains within which they can offer their own. They now even seem to be making ominous (from a Russian point of view) operational progress towards Tokmak and yet for months now Russia has been doing nothing. I just find that really odd. This is exactly the shadow that's been lurking in my thoughts for a few weeks and exactly how I'd have phrased my concerns if I wouldn't have felt like an imposter for doing so. In fact I think I addressed this a few days ago as well, in terms of asking whether theory says there's anything that can be done to help them get moving on this. Because it looks to me awfully like, somehow, Russia are negotiating with their own defeat even less now than they were earlier in the war.

For sure, it's exactly that. I was just trying to think of 'features' of the Ukrainian offensive, or at least the narrative around it, which have stood out and then disappeared. The part played by Ka-52s was one of those.

I am just going to walk past without getting involved in this but, should I drop any thing over my shoulder as I go maybe it can go towards drawing a line under this whole sub-thread? ... Whoops! Clumsy me!

Of course. As far as I can tell it’s been a combination of the factors California Dan just mentioned as well as some minor tactical tweaks to the composition of attacking forces (less vehicle-heavy, more artillery/infantry-led). Even without knowing the details for sure, though, we no longer see footage and photos of Bradleys and Leopards taking ATGM hits from 10km away while crossing minefields and I am pretty sure we would do if the Russians had them.

So, in the last few months it seems to be the case that Ukraine have: Successfully countered/neutralised the attack helicopter threat which caused some worrying tactical issues in the early stages of the offensive. Improved their air defenses to the point where it seems like few Russian drone/missile attacks ever actually get through to hit their targets. Apparently resolved a potential artillery ammunition shortage by receiving/using DPICM where necessary. Developed a significant additional threat to ocean-going and coastal vessels/infrastructure almost entirely through the use of unmanned surface drones. Developed a long-range drone/missile threat that now routinely hits targets deep inside Russia. Established occasional small-scale attacks on facilities in Crimea as basically routine. Apparently broken through the Russian forward line in the south, with Western consensus seeming to be that further progress should now be relatively easy to achieve. While, in the last few months, it seems to be the case that Russia have: Tweaked the age limits on existing conscription law, apparently in an attempt to scrape together a few thousand more men without further annoying the populace. Wallowed in internal mafia-politics, eventually resulting in the probable assassination of the Wagner leadership and subsequent apparent efforts to dissolve the rest of the group. So, first of all, is there anything significant that I have missed out from or got wrong about the above lists? If not, what do we make of the fact there seem to be no real signs of serious concern or panic coming from the Russian leadership? Where is the frantic lashing out and searching for solutions that you might expect of a military that appears to be heading towards at least an operational collapse? Is it: We are lacking in the information needed due to fog of war and/or biases in the information we have access to. The Russians are incapable of developing at the same pace as the Ukrainians for practical, cultural or economic reasons. The Russians do not actually perceive any serious threat posed by this summer's offensive, to the point that they are happy to sit in their trenches, confident that they will see it through. Assuming for argument's sake it is not actually #3, what do we expect to see from the Russian leadership in the next few weeks as a response to the worsening military situation? I cannot imagine that the Ukrainians will break through additional lines of defence and begin moving into places like Tokmak without the Russian government trying pretty damned hard to manage that situation both militarily and publicly.