Maciej Zwolinski

Agreed, attacks on bridges make sense. You just have to keep hitting them as soon as they show signs of repair. This could work

As a follow up question to the Russia Sucks at War theory I am wondering what is the reason for Russia being able to push Ukrainians back in the Soledar/south of Bachmut direction despite ample evidence of their sucking at war elsewhere. Superior number of men? Superior number of artillery? Better RUS equipment? Innovative Russian tactics? Greater tolerance for losses (effectvely, morale)? VDV finally remembering their training? Command mistakes on the Ukrainian side? Etc? My guess would be that the Russians once again concentrated significantly more artillery than the UKR and stockpiled enough munitions to achieve fire dominance. In other words, I think they are repeating the same formula, which gave them the slow advances in Summer 2022. And for a time, Wagner's unorthodox tactics also worked (until they run out of slave soldiers). But they are just guesses, so far I have seen no theory of Russian (underwhelming so far, but still) victory.

Can their not-elites attack at all? If you look at the map, the only units attacking are VDV and MPR, and Wagner. Perhaps spotting Russian offensive maneuvers is just that easy. It is wherever VDV/Marines fight. The other thing is that AFAIK the terrain before Vuhledar is relatively more open. So they may think more mechanised assets are necessary to cross the no man's land instead of the newly mobilised units, which tend to be more leg infantry By the way, I do not consider Wagner's prisoner army to be a "cheaper" unit. They are fairly unique, because a normal mobik unit would not submit to that kind of treatment and let itself to be quietly slaughtered, even with the extreme passivity and apathy of Russian mobilised. So this is not an ordinary Orc Boyz unit, more like a specialised "Snotling horde with Orc minderz" to give the player unique capabilities. It might have been a very fortituous thing that they were exhausted in Soledar, since there are problems with finding replacements in prisons and this special capability hopefully will not be replaced for long/ever.

I am not sure that a railway line can effectively be interdicted just by long range missile fire. See example of Kherson: with the Antonovskiy bridge down, the Russian supply was conducted through the Nova Kahovka dam-bridge (holed once, but then filled in with stone and rubble which proved resistant to HIMARS) and ferries. Both the Nova Kahovka and ferries were in HIMARS range, yet they were not hit frequently enough to slow down the supply in a meaningful way. Russians still had enough food and ammunition to the last day. Judging by the reports, in this war a supply line is considered cut off (I heard the expression "under fire control" very often) when it is under direct fire, or at least under direct observation from artillery observers.

That is exactly my point. I think therefore the Ukraine war will have to be won on the battlefield and the economic warfare has to be looked at as something which may aid the armies of the Free World, but will not the decisive factor in the enemy's collapse. More of WW 2 scenario than WW 1.

I am not sure if it is the current state of affairs. He did get into power by way of that social contract. However, now he got to the point where he seems to be persisting mainly on the backs of the FSB and Rosgvardia. He certainly has fully subjugated oligarchs and regional barons/power centres so that he does not need their support anymore, rather the other way round - they are fully dependent on his favour. Certainly. But Putin will be dead by that time by natural causes anyway. Soviet Union was an oligarchy with a longer time horizon than an elderly dictator.

Can you define or give an example of what you consider a bottom falling out event for Russia? I would like to make sure that we are not confusing an event which will damage the Russian economic growth prospects, competitiveness, standard of living etc. even for a long/indefinite time with an event which will cause Russia to drop out of the current war with the Ukraine . They are not the same. For example, let's assume that Russia has a choice of A. continuing war and incurring an economic crisis effectively regressing Russia to the 1980s Soviet Union planned economy and standard of living; or B. suing for peace and coming back to 23 Feb 2022 borders. I see a distinct possibilty that Putin will take option A. because option B. carries a high risk of him being deposed and/or kliled and he prefers tanking the RUS economy to suicide. Therefore, I do not think that regressing to 1980 economy is the bottom falling out event for Russia. And what do you think?

I think he is a massive Poroshenko fan or some kind of libertarian, anyway he dislikes the current UKR government and gives off that "lions led by donkeys" vibe. If you correct for this, his front updates are quite useful. For the fighting in Kherson and the Izyum region he seemed to have the best information. Also, he comes up with interesting tactical theories from time to time, like the Russian artillery being particularly effective due to close integration between artillery batteries and Orlan drone operators embedded at the battery level, or about Wagner fighting techniques.

There is also the fact, that Mariupol was defended mostly by Azov, Border Guards and Marines, units which have different chain of command that the usual Ukrainian Army forces. They might have gotten more leeway because of that, and Azov was particularly keen on defending Mariupol to the last.

This has to be read in the context of the seriously fragmented Israeli political scene. They have a very low threshold of votes allowing a party to put its representatives in the Kneset (3,25%) which results in the parliament of 120 members having 10 political parties on board. Their governements are always coalitions. Any large group of voters which can swing on a single issue, like supporting UKR vs RUS, has a very big influence on how that issue is going to be decided.

Sure, the war is not lost nor even heading towards the loss so far. "We are not dead yet" - to quote both our and Ukrainian national anthems. However, in order to win the Ukraine will probably have to show that they are capable of doing something they have not done until now: break through a strongly defended front and exploit. Ukrainian offensive successes to this moment were: 1) attacks against awkwardly deployed enemy (first phase of the war); 2) attacks against a denuded frontline (Balalkleia); 3) attacks against enemy with constrained supply lines (Kherson). Fair play to the Ukrainian command for being able to find those vulnerabilities, but after withdrawal from Kherson there do not seem to be any more of them, and there will have to be a frontal attack and breach somewhere. Unless the Ukrainians use the Russian offensive to take them out of defensive posture and destroy enough of them in the open to once again thin out the defenses. Perhaps Zaluzhny wants to try a different answer to the question "Warum wollen wir in diesem Jahr überhaupt im Osten angreifen" and prepare another "backhand blow". That would be interesting.

This. And after months of that chaos without a perspective of change, the Ukrainians themselves agree to peace talks on the basis of territorial concessions. The Russians do not budge on the Crimean corridor and Donbas, and the Ukraine finally agrees to lose access to the Sea of Azov and the Donbas industrial areas. Of course there is no hope of NATO or EU access because everybody expects a new invasion as soon as Russia rebuilds its armies. At best Ukraine becomes a much larger Kosovo, at worst gives up the Western direction at all and finlandizes towards Russia. Not a win.

This, and the unspoken assumption, that because of losses and economic crises Russian governement will be under political pressure from the electorate. Except that Russia is a dictatorship and there are no meaningful elections there, so the major usual source of that pressure does not exist. Actually, pretty much the only remaining kind of pressure from Russians on Putin's governement is threat of armed rebellion, and things need to be far worse for people to contemplate that. It took 3 years of constant hammering at the front, acute economic crisis and loss what was then considered Russian territory to rebel against the Tzar in 1917. Lowered living standards because of sanctions are not going to cause that.

Russia has about 3 times the Ukraine's fighting age population. So 3:1 in losses means that proportionally, they are losing the same quantum of fighting power, and anything below that ratio means that the Ukraine's doing worse in terms of attrition.

It is very good. However a few questions/comments come to mind immediately. 1. I am not sure if it makes sense to try and breach the AT ditch without any dismounted element to recce the ditch itself. I mean there could be RPG-men inside waiting for the perfect shot to bottom/side of the tank crossing the field bridge or engineers to blow the bridge ASAP after it was deployed. 2. Were the distances between vehicles to scale? Tanks and Brads seemed very bunched up. 3. They relied very much on smoke to obscure the breach from enemy weapons from beyond the objective. Would not work if the enemy has drones high up. 4. They assumed the use of DPICM against armoured targets

Indeed. Russian military bloggers praised BARS as generally better than the pre-war regulars.

The description reads uncannily like "Blackhawk down" minus helicopters

They certainly are more effective for area targets and much cheaper. Think counterbattery - wherever a drone finds a MSTA gun, there are likely 5 more. Fire DPICM all around it and you are likely to bag more than the one spotted. Or just shoot around the place where the CB radar shows outgoing fire without giving them time to relocate. Or for moving targets. GPS-guided rounds are not particularly reliable hitters against those. But shoot a some DPICM with overlapping sheafs all around the moving column and wait for Oryx to cry in frustration. GMLRS with DPICM used to be called "Grid square removers", not without reason.

This direction and the direction of Orikhiv-Tokmak-Melitopol have been heavily manned and fortified by Russians. Ever since summer 2022 there has been a talk of the next Ukrainian offensive in Zaporozhie to cut the Crimea corridor. The Russians have been preparing for this for a long time.

Withholding cluster munitions is not the right thing, but an irrational taboo, completely inadequate in this situation. The reason why US stopped using them was that the bomblets had 2% dud rate instead of the 1% dud rate, which is the accepted threshold for the US military from the UXO hazard point of view. Obviously this is based on concerns typical for the wars that the US is engaged in, counterinsurgencies in countries not fully capable to clean up their territory from failed munitions, where the hostilities are taking place next to civilian life. Ukraine is a country in Europe, waging a full scale war on its own land, which is already full of all kinds of unexploded bombs and shells, Russians cluster munitions included. Some DPICM bomblets (which probably have a dud rate much lower than the Russian ones) will not add to the UXO hazard in any appreciable way. Let it be the Ukrainians’ decision. The same goes for the AP mines, which the Ukrainian soil is already riddled with because Russians plant them by the ton.

Why on Earth did they do this?

Interesting choice of venue. PR-wise, it will be difficult to argue for appeasement.

There was an interesting article on Politico last Thursday, which provided one more explanation for Germany's procrastinating on supplying arms: https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-strategic-timidity-olaf-scholz-us-washington-joe-biden/ My take from this is that Germany's industry wants Germany to be seen as the country most reluctant to act adverse to Russia's interest in order to help recreation of economic relations after the war. Basically to be able to tell Russians: "We have always been your friend, the US and the rest of Nato forced us, but we were always the least enthusiastic" and therefore be the most favoured nation (i.e. the least disfavoured) whenever the sanctions stop and Russia again starts opening to trade. This makes sense. If it is true, then the consequences are both good and not so good: 1) German government is not adverse to the military support in principle, so eventually they should go along with pretty much everything the other partners want to do; 2) they will always be difficult and will always take a long time, because the pretense of resistance and indecision is the goal itself.

That Pistorius fellow hasn't got a leg to stand on. Or maybe it was a different one? (Sorry, I could not let this one go. Getting back to work now)

Do you mean her welcoming speech ("We can do this" etc.)? It was not universally liked, I assure you. In our corner of the woods majority of public opinion was sceptical or opposed. I think majority of people were afraid it will undermine border controls and result in something like the border rushes from Belarus, which we eventually experienced in autumn 2021. The fact, that EU in 2021 supported Polish decision to close the borders was a pleasant surprise.