Gnaeus

I can't give you a like, so I'll just post a hearty 'amen, Steve!' Unfortunately, his venom has already found some victims I follow Gen Martin Dempsey on LinkedIn and he posted a glowing commentary to Zelensky's speech to Congress, with the expected comparison of Churchill's speech to  Congress. He received a lot of flak from some respondents who used the 'strip club manager' line in their response and were very incensed at the General for his praise of both Zelensky and the Ukrainian people. Pretty sad that this would even be a talking point among Americans. Fortunately they still seem to be a vocal minority..

I woke up this morning to sub zero wind chills, howling wind and a little ice/snow on the ground.  Worried about the heat, do we have food in the fridge for a day or so, are the roads clear enough to go see my girlfriend,  etc.
Then I thought about Ukraine.  And I STFU about my own concerns.  
God Bless all of you in harms way, the Ukrainian military, Ukrainian refugees scattered all over Europe, and those in Ukraine trying to go about their daily lives with air raid sirens in the background wondering if today is their unlucky day.  The Ukrainian children taken from their homes/parents and now living in some backward hole in Russia---and think about my own kids in a similar situation.  Those that are no longer with us.
It makes me sad, then angry as Hell. 
God bless all of you going through such Hell and a return to safety and normalcy as soon as possible.  I've got nothing much else to offer but my words and my prayers. 
Peace to all.
(With apologies if this is a little off topic with regards to military strategy,etc. )
 

Finally got round to making this video. Throughout this year the bravery and skill of the Ukrainian state and military against overwhelming odds has been nothing short of outstanding, and since this war also has so much quality combat footage that wasn’t even remotely possible to create in previous major wars I figured it would be awesome to make an action-packed tribute video for Ukraine’s defenders.
Almost all the source material is combat footage since 24/02/2022. Some of the clips are super iconic and will be well known to all, while others are relatively unknown. I tried my best to include footage from throughout the year and featuring as many of Ukraine’s star performers as possible (biggest gripe is that I couldn’t make any reference to the Moskva sinking). Also, the whole Russian Z vs the Ukrainian + has been kinda fascinating to me, so clips that showed vehicles with those markings were preferred.
Thanks to all the users here who’ve been sharing such footage since things kicked off (especially some of the less famous stuff). This thread has been the source of many of the clips that were used, in addition to just being an awesome way to keep up with war news in general. 
And, of course, a great big salute to all Ukrainians for not only standing your ground against the Russian beast, but also showing it can be pushed back. It’s nothing short of incredible, and history will remember your defiance.
 

I want to build on this and hit a cancerous myth that is hijacking this board - the Ukrainian nuclear backstory myth.  Frankly it belongs to be in the outer darkness with the Bio Black Sites.  I also think it is dangerously skewing the views of some members and feeding into some really unhealthy narratives that are counter-productive and likely going to sour things going forward.
So looking this up the myth goes like this:
Back in the mid 90s Ukraine had a big suite of nuclear weapons it inherited from the break up of the Soviet Union.  Rather than hold onto them and being able to provide deterrence to Russian aggression almost 30 years later - Ukraine graciously decided to divest them back to Russia with the brotherly love of all mankind in their hearts.  The US and other nations then promised on a stack of Bibles and pictures of Baby Jesus that should any threat befall Ukraine, they would come riding over the hills like the Riders of Rohan and smote the threat with their mighty hands.  In 2014 - Russia did some shenanigan's in Donbas and Crimea, of which we all know and love, but the West yawned and went "well, are those really threats or is this kind of an internal issue?"  Poor Ukraine struggled on by itself to hold off the rabid Russian Bear until 2022 when it rolled its mangy a$$ over the border.  Ukraine is now calling in that nuclear favour...it is owed and "demands" the US and West honor its obligations and basically give Ukraine whatever it wants, whenever it wants because they gave up the nukes.  Further it is the US and West's fault for this war in the first place because we did not smite Russia back in 2014, so pay up and be quick about it. 
I get the impulse and given Ukraine's position it makes sense.  However, I would offer that "guilt, shame and demands" may not be the best way to go to guarantor the continued Western support Ukraine is going to need for about a decade after this war, let alone out the back end of next year.  But first lets beat up on that myth:
1.   Those nukes were nearly useless to Ukraine as deterrence towards Russia without significant cost and risks.  Yes there were a lot of nuclear weapons but they had never been given over to Ukrainian control, they were housed in Ukraine but Russian controlled the whole time.  Further, they were long range ballistic systems which were nearly useless at the tactical ranges Ukraine needed to deter Russian threats:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction.  Ukraine was a fledging ex-Soviet state and was hardly rolling in cash, so the option to re-tool those weapons was severely limited by resources.  Finally, if Ukraine had said "screw you, we are keeping them and re-tooling them" they would have seen heavy sanctions and possible military action from Russia or the West because loose nukes makes everyone really nervous.
2.  Ukraine was paid to lose the nukes, and freely took the money.  Ukrainian parliament voted overwhelmingly "(301-8)" to take the payoff and get rid of the the things.  This was not arm twisting or coercion, it was opportunism: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/12/05/why-care-about-ukraine-and-the-budapest-memorandum/.  And smart opportunism for that matter because at the time they were more trouble than they were worth.
3.  The famous "security guarantees".  Promises of security for Ukraine.  Not even close.  These were assurances, which is diplomatic speak for "mayhaps", and Ukraine knew it.  The Budapest Memo is not a security guarantee or collective security agreement, not even close.  https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/12/05/why-care-about-ukraine-and-the-budapest-memorandum/  It is a pretty vague agreement that the big powers would not pound on the small powers if they gave up their nukes.  Also the only security resolution mechanism was the UNSC, which of course was presided over by the big powers. Ukraine is a sovereign state and had its big boy pants on when it signed this thing and knew it was tying its security on the UN Charter - https://www.icanw.org/faq_on_ukraine_and_nuclear_weapons.  Which is great so long as a UNSC nation isn't the one to violate the freakin thing.
The US did promise to assist Ukraine should their sovereignty be threatened but the details of that assistance were never made concrete.  Frankly, given the assistance post-2014 and now I think the US is living up to its end of the agreement.
So as far as legal obligation, there is not one, never was. Ukraine took the money and avoided becoming a pariah by trying to become a nuclear power.  The US and West have actually delivered on assistance, to the point that Ukraine is winning this war.  Further there is absolutely zero obligation to assist Ukraine in its reconstruction after this war.  Here we are relying entirely on the good will and self-interests of the West, which is shaky ground on a good day.
What is true is the moral obligation.  How the EU got itself upside down on this whole Russian energy thing is beyond be, especially after 2014.  Hell Europe is still buying Russian oil: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Europe-Is-Buying-All-The-Russian-Oil-It-Can-Before-Banning-It.html.  So ya, we definitely did not walk the walk on defending democracy or human rights in Ukraine against an obvious threat...we took the payoff.  But before anyone jumps on that one...big.boy.pants.time.  That is how the world works, as crappy and unfair as it is.  We have been doing business with dictators and autocrats all over the world - Saudi Arabia looking at you - and turned a lot of blind eyes in many countries.  Ukraine is getting the platinum response, it is about as good as it gets for an outside nation to be honest and if there is a shift in the political winds it could be cut off pretty quick.
So "DEMAND" all you like; however, you are not entitled beyond the good will of the West and a self-interest need to ensure the global order holds against Russian aggression. You want to come on this forum and conduct a regular routine of western bashing - Germany is literally on a weekly clock - just know you are doing service to Russian interests when you do.  You want to get emotional, totally understandable but 1) do not create or support mis/dis information in doing so, it is counter to everything we try to do here and 2) hold your own politicians to account when this is over, Ukraine has a obligation to itself and the decisions that led to this are not all on the West, and 3) remember that guilt and shame is not your best play here.
Let me finish by perhaps expanding on the Western point of view - well US/5EYES as I cannot say I am privy to the entire western bloc.  We are exhausted.  30 years of cat herding and dealing with everyone else's problems has not been rewarding.  Sure we got the power and money, but for the love of gawd the endless whining and biting has really taken a shine off the whole thing.  Terrorism, intra-state wars, insurgencies and now Russia is being a total dick and pushing us to the edge.  There is a sentiment in the western power bases that we are sick of the rest of the world and its bullsh#t.  Tired of spending endless streams of money and people on countries we wouldn't look for on a map, time zones away. 
Then there is the pandemic: the US lost nearly 1.1 million people, and with excess deaths that number could be over 2 million - https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
And at the end of all that we get a global economic recession in the making.  So ya, snapping your fingers and waiving a Budapest Memo in our faces is likely to backfire really quickly.  The US is incredibly divided right now, and frankly so is Canada as a result of COVID impacts.  Good will for Ukraine is solid and damned well better hold; however, it is not guaranteed in the least.  So no, you need not grovel or "by your leave here" but maybe just try and remember who is on your side in this thing and sometimes we can disagree and even say "no" without going all millennial.
This thread stood up for reality when everyone thought we should get ready to bail and run on Ukraine -just this week I heard a retired Canadian 3-star say "there is no way Ukraine can secure victory in this conflict".  We stood against the crazy conspiracy theories on it all being Ukraine's fault.  We stood against mainstream "big money" analysist when they wrote the UA off.  And we should stand for the truth even when we don't like it.  If we can't do that then we should just close up this thread and we can all go to the Reddit threads of our choice and bask in those echo chambers of ignorance.

Gotta love how you are pulling numbers out of thin air without references or declaring your expertise.  I guess an internet connection is all anyone needs these days.
So you are talking about bringing up tank crews trained on the T-72s and converting them to the Leo 2 in a week?  And cold training new crews in 3 weeks for drivers and 3 months as gunner loaders?  So you came from a TDO position in an armored school? Which one?
Sure you could compress training on conversion but risks go up dramatically.  For example a driver with a weeks training is not going to have time to know how to handle mine ploughs and rollers, so first hillock taken to fast is going to knock out minefield breaching capability.  Then there is river crossing/snorkeling - that is a major hurdle and training bill not to get crews drowned...but there are no rivers in Ukraine...no problem.  As to your logistical plan of "send back to Poland", if the drivers and crew are lightly trained that is going to happen a lot more often because they will not know 1) how to avoid damaging the vehicle and 2) how to do first line repairs.  And then there is the "how do you train maintainers?" issue but why confuse the issue with facts?
The Pz2000 took about a solid month to get them out in ones and twos: https://eurasiantimes.com/german-monster-pzh-2000-breaking-down-in-fight-against-russia/  And of course we have reports of them breaking down along with a lot of the other western kit we sent in - not all of this is going to be crew training issues, as war is a contact sport, but it likely is not helping.  The Pz2000 and other artillery were critical system that were thrown into the fight over the spring and summer, not the formed formations one would need to turn western armour and IFVs into to really make a difference.
To take 100 Leo 2s and turn them into a coherent fighting force e.g. a Regiment or Battlegroup, that can do what everyone here wants them to do, from crew training, through troop and squadron, to combat team and battlegroup and finally in a formation context is going to take 6-12 months at best, if you do not want the thing flopping around the battlefield breaking itself.  OR, here is a crazy idea...we give the UA the equipment it is already trained on and organized to fight on as a priority.  We then pepper in critical systems that provide immediate payoff and can play to the ISR strengths we are also providing and give the critical range extensions - e.g. HIMARs.  We will take risks with some systems but wholesale re-tooling of the UA ground force while it is in contact in the middle of a war is a very dumb idea.
 

Absolutely the most important post here. Your words should be quoted at the top of every page of the forum! We humans are so good at getting irked with one another. We can turn on each other and face off over the slightest matter - at a moment’s notice. Many a useful Internet forum has gone up in flames and turned to ashes. Fortunately, Steve and Elvis are crack moderators and keep the pot from boiling over. But really, we ought not to need Daddy and his threat of the strap.

To be fair, in 10+ months, Haiduk has almost never "bubbled over", I think we could cut him (and others) a wee bit more slack. 
 
Really, we should all do that with each other - sure we all have different opinions and that can lead to arguing, but we're all on the same side, so we should take a few deep breaths and try not to get irked at disagreement, rather than reaching for the ignore button. 

And remember leave some slack for language barriers, too (which extend way past simple vocabulary differences into modes of expression).

The video from the field hospital is one of the most moving and inspiring things I have seen from the war.
I assume that there are equally disturbing scenes in civilian areas, given the intentional targeting of civilians. I have been contributing to the organization Direct Relief to provide medical supplies to Ukraine based on this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/02/opinion/ukraine-charity-donation-guide.html?searchResultPosition=4, and the ratings that it has received by other organizations that evaluate charities. You can earmark contributions for Ukraine.
I have no other connection with this organization.

The video from the field hospital is one of the most moving and inspiring things I have seen from the war.
I assume that there are equally disturbing scenes in civilian areas, given the intentional targeting of civilians. I have been contributing to the organization Direct Relief to provide medical supplies to Ukraine based on this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/02/opinion/ukraine-charity-donation-guide.html?searchResultPosition=4, and the ratings that it has received by other organizations that evaluate charities. You can earmark contributions for Ukraine.
I have no other connection with this organization.

The video from the field hospital is one of the most moving and inspiring things I have seen from the war.
I assume that there are equally disturbing scenes in civilian areas, given the intentional targeting of civilians. I have been contributing to the organization Direct Relief to provide medical supplies to Ukraine based on this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/02/opinion/ukraine-charity-donation-guide.html?searchResultPosition=4, and the ratings that it has received by other organizations that evaluate charities. You can earmark contributions for Ukraine.
I have no other connection with this organization.

How the field hospital near Bakhmut operates:


Google subtitles working fine.

Lol. Thanks Grigb. And we're all glad you're still with us, however constrained your posting is. Good luck sorting out RL.

This one right here is what I am not sure of.  So let’s take this war and transplant it to a fictional country but the Opposition are backed and supported by China.  Chinese ISR and smart weaponry, unmanned…the whole she bang.
We play our A-game and do Gulf War part deux all heavy and electrified.  So first things I like to think we would establish operational conditions but in a decade that is going to get harder and harder as counters to a lot of our systems continue to develop…because China.
But let’s just assume we do a better job of it in-country.  Well none of that solves for Chinese ISR outside the country and into space unless we really want to automatically widen the conflict - eg what would our reaction be if Russia started hitting western ISR assets outside Ukraine?
So what?  Our opponents in this proxy-Chinese country still have access to hi resolution multi-spectral ISR being fed to them in real time.  We, being the mighty west are 1) big, 2) hot and 3) hungry.  We are easily visible from space, our logistics tail is larger than the RAs in this war and we are more vulnerable to shortages because everything we have burns energy like nuts.  Our opponent may also very well start asymmetric hits outside their country that look a lot like Russian depots spontaneously exploding over the last 9 months as well.
Air power.  It is a fundamental assumption we have air supremacy in any war we will fight in the west.  To the point Canada abandoned air defence entirely as a capability.  Problem is that air superiority below 2000 feet is not a thing.  The RA is baking the air with EW and cannot keep UA UAS from seeing them and pooping HE on them.  If our opponent has cheap Chinese autonomous drone swarms with submunitions our multi-billion dollar air platforms are not going to matter.  And that is if we can even get those platforms into theatre.  SEAD is now every jerk with a MANPAD, which can hit up to 20+ thousand feet and is fed into all that Chinese ISR.
Indirect fires.  Last I checked, western hardware is allergic to MLRS as the Russians.  So if our opponent has highly dispersed but integrated deep precision strike capability they are hard to find, while we very definitely are not.  Our fuel and ammo is on trucks too and Chinese HIMARs hiding in a barn linked into persistent ISR we can’t do anything about is going to make us run out of gas…and we will do it faster do to consumption rates.
Anti-armor/vehicle.  So our opponent in this fictional war is armed with a whole bunch of Chinese Javelins and NLAWs etc.  Dispersed they can hit us at nearly 3kms, fire and forget.  They also have one-way loitering munitions…again all hooked into that ISR problem.  Our hot, heavy and concentrated heavy formations are going get hit effectively at really long ranges.  “Ah but we will have APS which will sweep those pesky ATGMs from the air”.  Ok, assuming they don’t do sub-munitions, decoys and a raft of work arounds, sure.  Next question: are we mounting APS on our entire logistics tail?  Because we are back to it getting seen and hammered.
Urban areas.  We have been extremely lucky that all our opponents (Iraq) were dumb enough to mostly meet us in the open.  An urban fight soaks up our western advantages really fast.  An opponent who has time to prepare and is set up to defend home urban areas is going to really hurt us badly…and we are also back to logistics support to that urban fight.  I have no idea what a modern or near future urban fight is going to look like with unmanned in the mix but “easier” does not spring to mind.
Now maybe we have counter UAS and drone swarms of our own.  Problem, our opponent is designed to fight dispersed…we are not.  A few unit types are set up for it, but the main are not designed to fight as light infantry.  In this little war our opponents are designed for this kind of work.  So we will have a steep learning curve and in war most learning is thru dying.
So what?  Well western superiority is challenged in this scenario, on more than one level.  Assuming we can get enough forces, and if we go the traditional route we are going to need a LOT of our forces, keeping them in the fight is going to be incredibly hard.  This will be sticking a steel gauntlet hand up to the shoulder in a beehive.  You would need to armor the entire length of the arm and you are still going to get stung badly as the bees get in behind things.
The cost is very high as casualties in this scenario are going to be a shock.  I am not sure we can even sustain let alone win urban combat.  As you note, the insurgency, if we make it that far, is going to make the last ones look adorable in comparison. The political calculus for this in the west makes my head swim.
In short, I see a side in this war that fights along the same approaches we do - and it isn’t the one that is winning.  “Ya but we will do a better job” makes me really nervous as I am not sure what “a better job” really looks like given some of these trends.  We may have stalled later.  We may have pulled it off with fewer casualties and taken ground faster but I am not sure terrain matters when there is an urban fight at the end of a rainbow and you are getting hit along the entire length of your operational system.  I like to think we could have isolated the country from its strategic support but that is not a sure thing either.  I would be willing to bet that even with the western powers in place of the RA the war would last longer and be far bloodier than anything we have seen since Korea.  To the point I am not convinced success is guaranteed if we continue to play be our current rule set.
In the west, in some circles, I am seeing echoes of the European powers as they observed the US Civil War - “interesting but of course we do things better”…which they believed right up to 1914.  If we are smart we will be op researching this thing to death and binning all our assumptions until they are confirmed or denied one way or the other.

Definitely wanted to weigh in on this one.  So there was an earlier draft out of RUSI but this is likely one of the most comprehensive analysis/assessments of the first 6 months of the war - outside of our little forum here, of course.  There is nothing in the summaries and conclusions that does not match a lot of what we have been seeing and saying on this forum - at least in the main.  So if you are following this war with us here at BFC, I highly recommend downloading the document and giving it a good going over, you will walk away smarter and with what appears to my eyes a very objective and balanced narrative of the first two phases: Russian invasion & Battle for the Donbas, or perhaps it was really a single strategic phase - the Russian Offensive.
However, I would caution that this is a "Preliminary" analysis, it is in the title.  It is incomplete, and in at least one or two spots that incompleteness is leading to what I think are incomplete conclusions.  Even being likely the best professional analysis we have seen what struck me most about this document is "what it did not say" - there are a lot of gaps here in both scope and scale.  I do not think they are deliberate or a result of laziness at all.  The authors state up front in the introduction "This report is methodologically problematic" because they could only employ data that was provided to them by the UA General staff.  That is not small but that data was filtered - they note this as well - for OPSEC and political sensitivity reasons.  Further there is massive amounts of data missing that will be required for a more accurate picture.  Data from the other two parties in this war - Russia and The West.  A lot of deductions on Russian intent, capability and performance are made here without a lot from those other two data streams, so I am very cautious in accepting gospel at this point.  So that said up front I will dig into this with some initial takeaways/observations for any who are interested:
Pre-Invasion
So this pretty much confirms what we suspected from very early on - Russian had only planned for a 10 day "war".  Russia, like many in the west, way over-estimated the relative symmetry and competitive advantage at the outset of this war.  Russia, like many western analysts, were using outdated concepts and metrics with respect to mass while at the same time were way over-estimating their own capabilities and readiness.  Russian planners were experiencing what has been referred to a progressive unreality, which is a fancy way of saying they built a house of cards on a foundation of shifting sand.
Russian "shock and awe" through operational surprise was a flawed concept in the 21st century.  It appears the UA was initially somewhat dislocated, the authors even go so far to say that Russian operational surprise was achieved by convincing the UA that the main effort would be the Donbas:
"As it became apparent that the Gomel axis was the enemy’s main effort and that another group of forces would
strike through Chernihiv, a redeployment of Ukrainian forces was ordered approximately seven hours prior to the invasion. This took considerable time. The result was that many Ukrainian units were not at their assigned defensive positions when the invasion began and, especially on the northern axes, were not in prepared positions."
So this highlights a really important missing peice from this whole analysis - the role of western ISR.  I have no doubt the authors and UA General Staff scrubbed any mention of this from the data used for many very good reasons.  But given the massive pre-war ISR effort by the west and the open-door policy with respect to intel from the US - how on earth did the UA miss the indicators on the Gomel axis?  This one sounds very weird to my ears and there is definitely a story here that is going to need unpacking.  Was there a failure in western ISR?  Was there a breakdown in communications?  Did UA planners fall for progressive unreality of their own?
It appears that Russia bet the entire farm on "the mighty Russian bear" in a series of increasingly unrealistic assumptions, built upon unrealistic assumptions.  Here we hit the other missing peice - what was the actual Russian thinking?  We cannot know this from data given - although authors lean in pretty hard, and I am not sure we will ever get a full Russian internal picture.  
Initial Invasion
The big takeaway for me here was the serious disparity in RA C4ISR and catastrophic misalignment in the levels of warfare.  There were a lot of systemic targeting problems and the failure to establish operational pre-conditions in favor of operational surprise - destruction of transportation and communications infrastructure.  However the indicators of lack of targeting enterprise integration are pretty bold:
"A critical weakness of the Russian strike campaign was battle damage assessment. First, the Russian military appears to have presumed that if an action had been ordered and carried out then it had succeeded, unless there was direct evidence to the contrary."
This speaks to a fundamentally flawed Russian joint targeting enterprise.  Further confirmation bias is pure poison in warfighting.  It causes can be so deep that there are examples worse than what we saw in the first days of the war.  In Russia's case they seem to be a combination of deep cultural biases combined with a rigid military-political hierarchy where "push back" or critical thinking is simply not a thing.  There is a fear in every military that the worst thing that can happen is "the death of formation" - the military organization collapsing into an armed mob.  Russia demonstrated in the initial invasion of Ukraine that the only thing worse than taking a military mob to war is taking a military cult.  
Based on what I can see the failure in the first three days was a combination of very poor planning and preparation, failure to establish operational pre-conditions and way under-estimating the complexity of the operation while at the same time way over-estimating the RA's capabilities.  In much more blunt terms, from a military operational point of view it was amateur hour.  Russia had not undertaken an offensive operation of this scope, size and scale since the Second World War, and they figured it would be "2014+ a little bit".  When the reality is that complexity and friction do not scale linearly - they do so exponentially; Ukraine 2022 was not 2x harder than 2014, it was 2 orders of magnitude (100x) more difficult and clearly the RA was not prepared for it.
Battle for Kyiv
To my mind this is the biggest blank spot in the document.  Even given the RA poor performance in the first 72 hours, they were able to achieve "12:1" force ratios on the Gomel axis towards Kyiv.  The authors appear to lay the majority blame for the RA stalling and eventual collapse largely on tactical "confusion".  They point out the BTG as a flawed concept - which frankly does not track as it mirrors western Battlegroup and TF constructs very closely.  Very few militaries have permanent combined arms units - they are largely modular by design.  So when the authors highlight:
"In addition to BTGs being units that had not trained together and lacking staff who knew one another, they were also non-uniform in their composition. These deviations did not appear to derive from the tasks they were assigned but instead arose from the equipment available from the units that generated them. Yet, to commanders at higher echelons, the Russian battle management appeared to treat all BTGs as comparable units of action with no tailoring of tasks to their respective capabilities. When military advances are used as a mere demonstration of force this would not have been critical. But once the force tried to transition to fighting, units were now assigned tasks for which they were poorly equipped.
As an example, consider the composition of two BTGs, which operated in almost the same area in the east of Ukraine at the end of April 2022. One of them was from the 228th Motor Rifle Regiment of the 90th Armoured Division of the Central Military District (Svatove district): 23 APCs; six tanks; a 122-mm selfpropelled artillery battery; three MLRS BM-21 ‘Grad’; up to 40 vehicles; and about 400 personnel. Another was from the composition of the 57th Motor Rifle Brigade of the 5th Army of the Eastern Military District (Rubizhne district): more than 30 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs); 14 tanks; a 122-mm self-propelled artillery battery; a 152-mm self-propelled artillery battery; a MLRS BM-21 ‘Grad’ battery; up to 60 vehicles; and about 800 personnel."
So I find this confusing and lacking.  So how were the 228th MRR and 57th MRB BTG mis-employed?  It alludes to higher level RA commanders treating all BTGs as uniform and failure to "task tailor" and I really want to see the evidence of this.  The lack of uniformity is very common throughout modern militaries all over the place.  When I look at these two BTGs I see one "light" and one "heavy" - so what?  How was the 228th asked to do a job it was not capable of?
Again, what is really missing here is "what killed the RA north of Kyiv" because tactical confusion was very likely a contributing factor but the UA took on an opponent with a 12:1 force ration advantage and that opponent pulled out a month later in tatters.  A lot of themes here to unpack - zombie orders, complete lack of operational/tactical C2 integration, capability misalignment and logistical issues (only alluded to).  But while all of this definitely contributes to operational system strain - it does not blow up the amount of hardware we saw unfold on Oryx.  
From my read the UA held off a 12:1 force overmatch with a couple artillery brigades, SOF and ad hoc TD units - who "did not have enough ATGMs to really make a difference anyway?"  So the RA drove towards Kyiv - its main effort - in a confused and rambling fashion.  Sat on the roads in "tactical confusion" and lack of air superiority for a month while the UA killed them like freakin buffalo, largely with indirect fire from two formations?  Huh?
So here I think we need a lot more depth.  How many RA vehicles were killed by indirect fire and how much indirect fire?  How was that indirect fire targeted?  Where was the RA c-battery: did the RA really just sit there and let UA artillery hammer them without responsing?  How many vehicles were killed by those ATGMs?
[aside: I am pretty confused by the ATGM assessment to be honest.  The UA did not have enough ATGW to make a difference:
"The tactical employment of ATGWs by the UAF prior to the conflict was largely aimed at fixing or blunting enemy armoured manoeuvre and for use in raiding by light forces because of the speed with which units with these systems could displace. There were too few missiles, however, for these to be the primary means of attriting enemy forces."
Ok, well earlier they note that the UA had purchased close to 20,000 soviet-style and homemade ATGMs after 2014.  to which they received about 3000 Javelins and NLAWs.  So what did all that do to "attirting" enemy forces?  What was the effect of "raiding" on an already confused RA.  What was the role of integration of those light forces and indirect fires.?]
On the Battle of Kyiv I am left with far more questions than answers, and a whole lot here is still not adding up.  Again, missing is the role western ISR support played.  RA troops broad casting in "the clear" is not great but it cannot explain the level of precision lethality to effectively cold-stop a military system with the kind of over-match the RA had.  If western space-based ISR was fully engaged the fact that the RA used cellphones is not why they died - it was because they could be seen from space in real time.  While the RA clearly lacked the same.
Tanks?  Critical and the UA had lots...but mostly for indirect fire....WTF?!  There are so many weird sounds with respect to military mass coming out of all this it is starting to sound like a piano being fed into a woodchipper to me.
EW and UAS - wow.  Ok, so clearly this is what the environment looks like with UAS being very effectively countered.  This is not open skies, the RA has been knocking these things down like crazy and yet it has not really helped them as UA unmanned is still being used to great effect.  And again, EW is going to do nothing against higher altitude and space-based systems. 
Battle for the Donbas
Really no surprises here - we did see a lot of this here on the forum.  The political spin on why the UA did not simply pull out and stayed and fought was very interesting - i.e. war crimes in occupied areas effect.   The density of RA fires and essentially human wave attacks really highlight something else with respect to mass - the unbearable weight requirement.  So in order for the RA to achieve enough overmatch they had to concentrate so much that mobility was basically sacrificed.  They appear the limiting factor on the rates of advance in the Donbas because moving all those guns with their ammo could not be done quickly.  This appears to be what "dumb mass" risks on the modern battlefield.
I am stumped however, on why the RA never achieved breakthrough.  The massive sacrifices of the UA cannot be understated here but was that the thin blue and yellow line that held off all that weight?  Or was there something else going on to explain why after literally annihilating ground with HE, the RA was never able to breakthrough and manoeuvre?  What was the comparative UA density in these areas?
After this I am getting the sense that the Donbas was a modern day version of Verdun as the RA broke itself further for very little gain.  The damage to the UA and how much it was able to push-back is incomplete, so the nature of how this contest unfolded is unclear.  What we do know is that the RA lost the offensive after Donbas, and the UA picked it up. 
Conclusions
Despite leaning in hard and taking risks in some parts of this assessment - e.g the inner working of the RA.  The authors are actually pretty cautious their conclusions.  These are all sound but my take away is, again, something happened to military mass in this war.  "No Sanctuary" and "Disperse or Die" are basically the same point - the traditional use of mass is beyond challenged, it has proven fatal to the RA. I am very interested on how the UA employed dispersion throughout this war, particularly on the offensive.  "Fighting for the Right to Precision" is very interesting, and I think hints at the "cloud-based warfare" we have been tossing around: however, it also lacks the effects of western space based ISR.  I am convinced that fighting for the right of precision will extend into space and cyber (which gets mentioned exactly twice in the entire document).  Further as unmanned systems get smarter I am more convinced that "Fighting through Precision" is the emerging theme.
For example I have used the term "anti-mass" a few times.  This appears to be a combination of speed and precision combined to create a pressure wave of smart-attrition to systematically deconstruct an opponents operational system.  Further precision is becoming a key component in survivability.  The document alludes to this:
"Precision is not only vastly more efficient in the effects it delivers but also allows the force to reduce its logistics tail and thereby makes it more survivable. Precision weapons, however, are scarce and can be defeated by EW ."
I am left wondering what happens when precision weapons are no longer scarce and ISR clouds that go from sub-surface to space are created that cannot be defeated by EW?
Finally the "significant slack capacity" point is at odds with precision, or perhaps they are mutually supporting in reality.  Precision really means very high efficiency combined with effectiveness.  So one does not need massive amounts of dumb war stocks, but one may need massive amounts of smart-war stocks because they are now on the critical path.  I do not think either side in this war has fully expressed what mass-precision looks like but the UA is coming damned close.
The_Capt's axiom update:
Mass beats isolation, connected precision beat mass, integrated massed precision beats everything.
Re-thinking War
I am coming to a growing sense that warfare is in need of a serious rethink.  We have principles and foundations that remain unchanged - e.g. selection and maint of the aim, morale, attrition.  But we have others that are looking more and more as though they are in the wind - surprise, manoeuvre, concentration of mass.  I think we need to start looking through different lens's and frameworks, as many of our old ones are challenged.  Our planning processes and how we make assumptions, how we define "decision" and "victory".  How we think about the translation of military power - to capability - to effect - to decisions and outcomes.  How we think about capability itself.  To my mind this is a good thing, if we do it ahead of evolution.  Whether or not we are in a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is an entirely different question.  Many thought we were in the 90s and early 00's but it kind of petered out.  I suspect RMAs take longer than a couple decades to culminate so we could very well be in the middle of one; however, it is very hard to say without more evidence. 
I can only say the best course is to keep watching carefully, critically and continuously as you can.  For me the progress of this war has been both terrible, wasteful and simply tragic.  It has also been professionally mesmerizing - the entire point of mastery of warfare is so you do not have to fight one, or if you do it is short and sharp as possible.  The lessons from this war all point to reinforcing the primacy of this idea. 
   
  

Zelensky amazes me.  Here's a guy that only 4 years ago was an actor, comedian and businessman with a law degree and no foreign policy, governmental or military experience.  But yet, he's leading one of the most complex, challenging globally high profile and difficult situations of this century.  And he seems to be making all the right moves time and again.  The way he handles himself, his words and quiet but confident demeanor continue to be on point.  Yes, I'm sure he's getting expertise, coaching and direction from multiple sources---but he's choosing to listen and take advise from seemingly all the right people which is an art unto itself. 
And to think what his life is like on a daily basis, to have to be "on" month after month.  The guy flat out has my respect and I hope to someday read his memoirs on from late 2021 until this ends.  
 
 

I don't know art, but I know what I like 😀

Oh definitely, we knew about 72 hours in this had not gone according to plan, and by the end of the first week it was apparent they RA was in serious trouble.  I think we bounced onto "Sieges from Hell" phase for about a day or two before it become apparent from the stream of tactical vignettes that the RA logistical system was completely failing and its C2 was not far behind.  The collapse of the Northern theatre was not a surprise in the least, in fact I think they held on longer than was healthy.
We also forecasted the slow grind to nowhere in Phase II in the Donbas and were waiting with bated breath for the UA offensive in the fall (Phase III).  I was personally very surprised at the UAs ability to sustain two separate operations on either end of the front line as both Kharkiv and Kherson were happening concurrently.  Since then corrosive warfare continues its steady march to a tipping point at Kherson.  What happens next is a likely steady pushing pressure UA over the winter, some sort of weak RA symbolic offensive as Russia tries to freeze this thing.  I suspect the UA will wait until conditions are right but I can see that infamous "land bridge" being cut down the middle.  Beyond that I have more questions than answers - how long does it take for the Russian military complex to completely fail?  How long for the Russian economy to fail?  How long for the internal divisions within Russia to start making serious noise?  How long can the West hold out in support, how long before the West gets distracted by its own crap?
All war is certainty/vision, communication, negotiation and sacrifice.  Those last two will start to increasingly impact the first two for each side over time and I suspect we will end up with a result no one is happy with at the end, but maybe we can avoid WWIII or a Russian Civil War redux with nukes if we are really lucky. 

Or 3.  You and the analyst were (are) basing your conclusions on incomplete understanding - both parties saw what they wanted to see - and when the coin landed, your predictions turned out to be more correct.  None of this is particularly good news as analysis is all about focusing on what you get wrong and digging into that to get a better understanding.  Self-validation creates a reinforcing effect that leads future analysis off a cliff because "you already have it all figured out".  I would say the mainstream analysis before this war did exactly that, but that does not mean you have developed a universal or unifying theory that will inform the next war based on "see, Russia Sucks".  The missing piece as far as I can see is a detailed understanding of "how and why" they are sucking, which I firmly believe the "Russia just Sucks" camp is vastly over-simplifying.
Ok, off the mark, do you have any supporting analysis or post-action to back any of this up?  Is this your perspective of events or does it align with post-war analysis?  If so, well ok, but here is some counter-narratives:
https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NS-D-10367-Learning-Lessons-from-Ukraine-Conflict-Final.pdf  I point to section 3 specifically (pgs 8-13)
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1400/RR1498/RAND_RR1498.pdf  Pages 43-45 cover the period from May 14 - Feb 15 when conventional RA forces were fully engaged to stop the failing of their proxy Donbas forces from LNR/DPR - you can see how quickly the war shifted once the BTGs got engaged and specifically "Although artillery skirmishes continued, both sides took a break to rearm, train, and consolidate between September 5, 2014, and January 13, 2015, when Russia launched a second offensive. Following a second encirclement and defeat at Debaltseve, Ukraine signed the Minsk II ceasefire on February 12, 2015, with terms highly favorable for Moscow." (p45) This Rand document is fascinating in hindsight (note Kofman as lead author) as it gets a lot right in forecasting the weakness of Russian strategic assumptions, particularly in the political and information warfare domain.  It gets a lot wrong with respect to the potential of hybrid warfare, noting it was "inconsequential" when conventional forces arrived on the battlefield (p 70) when the RA crushed the Ukrainian defence.  I think that conclusion led mainstream thinkers down the wrong path at the start of this war.
https://mwi.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Analyzing-the-Russian-Way-of-War.pdf  Interesting peice on the link between Georgia 2008 and Ukraine - punchline the RA learned a lot from Georgia and underwent reforms which led to 2014 success...but not so much in 2022.
And finally the peice by Karber - the guy actually got so close he got hit in an MLRS strike:
https://prodev2go.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/rus-ukr-lessons-draft.pdf
In this peice Karber goes on at length at the effectiveness of the BTG and the emerging "Russian way of War", I know the US military took this pretty seriously, as did we as on paper the BTG could outrange any of our BattleGroups TFs.  We then saw similar trends in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and the mainstream estimate was they would unfold in Ukraine in 2022 - nothing on "Russia Sucks".
So I do not agree that the post-war analysis nor the facts on the ground (see Rand study) support the idea that RA sub-par performance was observed.  The fact that a pretty modest interjection of RA forces in Aug 14 at Ilovaisk ("4000 troops") dealt a major reversal to the UA, and then the decisive defeat of the UA at Debaltseve in Jan 15 forced Ukraine to the negotiation table to sign a pretty bad deal for them (Minsk II).  There is plenty of evidence that the LNR/DPR separatist forces sucked, but Russia was trying very hard to keep a lid on the whole thing for deniability reasons.  Nothing in any of these assessments/analysis (and there are plenty more - Anx A of the first link has two pages of references) point to the pre-ordained abysmal performance seen in this war.
I am not sure what sources you were pulling from to come to your conclusions; however, it might just be possible that 1) all the above mainstream post-war analysis is wrong, and 2) whatever sources you were using were correct, and Russia really did suck...but - the end-state does not support that perspective either.  Regardless of tactical performance Russia achieved pretty much the impossible, it fully annexed the Crimea and over half the Donbas region without a reaction from the West.  The more I read into this, I strongly suspect that Ukraine 2014 was Putin's "Czechoslovakia" moment and he convinced himself the west was so divided (divisions he helped make worse) that we would sit back and let Ukraine fall, so go "full Poland" in 2022.  There is no way to spin 2014 was anything other than a Russian "win" both on the battlefield and on the political stage based on how things unfolded on the ground.
I am afraid that if this served as the foundation of how you saw the outcomes of this war then you too were working with incomplete concepts.  If you had gone into 2014 with "Russia Sucks due to Georgia 2008 = they will lose" you would have been completely wrong.  Bringing that theory to this war does not make it anymore correct - the theory found a war where it made more sense, but that does not make it a workable general theory.  This would be akin to developing a theory "The US Sucks at War" based on its performance in Korea (and there was plenty of evidence in the first year) and then predicting Vietnam as a US loss because "the US Sucks at War" - this glosses over so much nuance and context as to be nearly meaningless.  The mainstream analysis went the other way - "Russia is Terrifying in 2014, so they must be terrifying in 2022", which is not any less incorrect and shame on people who get paid for this work.
So what?  "Russia Sucks at War" is not a workable or even accurate foundational theory in my opinion.  It is inconsistent with observed phenomenon in previous conflicts and fails to take into account the complexities of context and evolutions of warfare over time.  "Russia Sucks at This War", how badly and why is worth exploring in depth, not the least of which is how much the UA/western backed warfare is forcing the RA to "suck".  The very tricky part is to try and distill these reasons into trends that may continue and influence the next war.  There is significant risk in porting over all the observations from this war to the next one e.g. Tanks are Dead - I cannot say if tanks are dead, they appear somewhat out of place in this war but we need to understand "why" before we can say if the next war will see the same thing.  However, I think we do agree that Russian failures and Ukrainian success do not operate in glorious isolation of each other - they have a shared causality with each other.  And the study of that relationship does not neatly sum up to "Russia Sucks", at least not from my point of view. 
 

And I would argue that the point you are missing is that on a strategic and operational level they took that “pretend force” and advanced deeply into the country they were invading and still hold over 20% of it.  We can slight their tactical capability all day (and do) and even though they have been a mess strategically and operationally there is nothing Potemkin or “cargo cultish” about the threat they pose or what they were capable of at higher levels of warfare, particularly at the beginning of this war.
It is as slippery a slope to under estimate the comparative tactical capabilities, as was demonstrated by many experts before this war.  They failed to downscale their strategic and operational assessments and we saw pretty quick the results on the ground quickly failed to meet predictions.  Hell three days into this thing we knew all of the higher level assessment were off because of what we saw on the ground.
Underestimating cuts both ways.  It is just as dangerous to try and take tactical shortfalls and upscale them directly onto the operational and strategic levels.  We have witnessed too many brilliantly conducted strategic campaigns with low quality forces in the VEO space to fall for that one.  Russian tried a form of combined arms that simply did not work; however, they still translated that into limited strategic/operational objectives.  
It was the Ukrainian way of war, supported by the west, and some emerging realities of warfare that broke the Russian system.  Ukrainian forces learned faster and better.  Without western support would we be talking about a Ukrainian offensive at all?  Without Ukrainian fast development of capability?  No, the RA was a hot mess and is a dumpster fire at this point but that was not the determinative factor in this war.  They had enough mass advantage, as ugly as it was, that if this was a battlefield of even a decade ago they might have pulled it off.  This is the biggest problem with the “Russia Sux” narrative, it is far too easy an answer.  It misses a lot of nuances and complex factors that we have literally been tracking right here.
The RA was a fumbling mess but it was at the gates of an enemy capital.  They still are resisting and will likely still be on occupied ground by this winter.  What I am on the lookout for are signs the Russians are actually learning.  For example, they bought a bunch of Iranian UAVs but they are using them as ersatz cruise missiles, not to improve their C4ISR game…which is a good sign they are still not learning.
Finally the biggest reason I am firmly against the “Russia just sux” narrative is that it encourages us to stop learning.  If that is the definitive unifying theory of this war then all phenomena can be explained by it, we have nothing left to learn.  This does nothing to inform us on the direction modern war is heading nor how we need to start thinking about it because it all boils down to “Russia Sux!”  Well 1) Russia is sucking but not everywhere, 2) that does not explain everything we have been seeing and 3) there are things happening in this war that “cargo cult” does not explain and we are way off if we start to thinking that way.

Maybe it's just me, but I cut Kraze some slack.  Because if my country was being raped, devastated, killed, kidnapped, tortured, etc. I'd probably be little biased and bigoted also.   But very thankfully I haven't had to experience any of that during my lifetime.  Walking in someone else's shoes and all that...

Also:
09-30-22
SEPTEMBER 30 AT 12:48 AM
We need to talk about the anti-mobilization unrest in Russia
Why the Russians running from mobilization are not refugees, not Ukraine’s allies, and not anti-war
What happened?
On September 21, Putin declared “partial mobilization” in Russia, planning to conscript from 300,000 to 1,200,000 Russians to strengthen the Russian positions in Ukraine.
This sparked panic and unrest among many Russians as the government had repeatedly told for months that there was no need for mobilization and that the situation in Ukraine was “under control”.
Protests, sabotage, and mass exodus came in the first week of the decision. More than 260,000 (mostly male) Russians fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan, and other countries. Multiple arsons were reported at military enlistment offices, and many local protests emerged as well.
Mixed signals followed
The Baltic states and Poland quickly reacted by saying they will not grant asylums to Russians fleeing mobilization because "A refusal to fulfill one’s civic duty in Russia or a desire to do so does not constitute sufficient grounds for being granted asylum in another country" – as Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu commented.
Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, however, claimed that they would welcome Russians because "Anyone who courageously opposes Putin's regime and thereby falls into great danger, can file for asylum on grounds of political persecution."
There seems to be disunity in the question of how should the democratic world view the fleeing Russians. So let’s unpack the situation.
Anti-mobilization, not anti-war
Probably the most important takeaway that everybody should keep in mind: Russians fleeing mobilization are not anti-war. Some of them might be, but the vast majority are simply running away because they are scared to be drafted and sent to the battlefield.
These people were not protesting or opposing the war (sabotaging the military actions, voicing their political positions, doing anything meaningful in response to the war) for 7 months – even after the mass massacres in Bucha and Mariupol. They were fine with their country committing genocide as long as it didn’t affect them personally.
Also, no policy in Russia targets these people for who they are and what they think. The only people truly targeted are the colonized indigenous people. Mind that out of all mobilized people in occupied Crimea, around 80-90% are Crimean Tatars – people who have already experienced numerous attempts from Russia to wipe them out throughout the last two centuries. So no, ethnic Russian urbanites are not targeted by Putin’s regime. They are simply afraid of what might come next as they agree to fulfill their civic duty.
Now that more Russians will try to run away and ask for asylum in different countries, it’s important to keep in mind that they are not politically repressed members of an anti-war movement – they are men afraid that their comfortable, peaceful lives are about to be seriously disrupted. They are men who have nothing else to do in response to their government’s outrageous actions apart from running away.
Not (war) refugees
Look, I’m not even going to go into details about why it’s morally wrong to compare Russians running away from mobilization to Ukrainians running away from shelling and genocide. Even though Czech President Milos Zeman said that the country “should grant visas to these people in the same way as to Ukrainian refugees,” it seems obvious to me that these two categories of people are experiencing incomparable levels of injustice. They cannot and should not be viewed as the alike victims of Putin or war.
Because the people running away are not running from war – they are running from conscription. Remember, there is no war in Russia: their towns are not getting shelled, and their residents are not hiding in bomb shelters. There is only war waged by Russia, outside of Russia.
Mixing up Russian anti-war activists, Ukrainian refugees, and Russians running away from mobilization fails to distinguish the aggressor and the victim. It’s tone-deaf and, frankly, immoral.
Not allies of Ukraine
Okay, so if Russians fleeing mobilization are not politically repressed activists or war refugees, then who are they? Aren’t they at least on Ukraine’s side in a way that they don’t want to take part in Russia’s war?
Ukrainians remember how silent practically all Russians were after Bucha and Mariupol. We know that if the same people are told to murder civilians by their command, they will do that – all while saying how Putin is responsible for all of this. We’ve been there.
Ukrainians are also too weary of countless “good Russians” who claim to be our allies but then reveal their toxic imperialistic xenophobia as soon as topics like Crimea, Chechnya, or Georgia are mentioned.
The best Ukraine can offer to Russians who get mobilized against their will is that it is happy to take in those who surrender or desert on the battlefield. As Zelensky’s Head of Office Andriy Yermak recently tweeted: “The mobilized Russians who will surrender will save their lives. As to the rest, their odds will betray them.”
Should we support Russians fleeing mobilization?
Isn’t supporting the Russian runaways good for the end goal – making Russia lose the war and break Putin’s regime?
Well, not really. The runaways’ lives would not be in danger because there’s a war on their land or because the regime is threatening their lives. Paradoxically, they are running away to not be rightfully killed by Ukrainians defending their land.
Praising the current exodus as an act of “courageous opposition” and encouraging it fails to see what Russians are really trying to escape from – responsibility. Responsibility to stand up and fight against the oppressive regime – if not in an act of solidarity with Ukrainians, then at least as a way to save their own lives. It’s time for Russians to own what their state is doing – and stop running away.
More disruption in Russia is a good thing
But the more Russians run away, the fewer of them will be sent to kill Ukrainians, right?
Well, no. First of all, Russia will not run out of human cannon fodder any time soon – and that’s exactly how the conscripts are planned to be used on the frontline. Even if millions flee, millions more will be conscripted instead of them – most probably from the colonized indigenous populations of non-European Russian lands.
The exodus will not weaken Putin’s regime in any significant way. In fact, it might even be a good thing for the stability of the regime. Until Russians feel the discomfort of war in their daily lives, they will remain silent supporters of the war. The more discomfort is brought by the war, the more their financial stability and the daily lives of their loved ones are affected – the more damage is done to the social pact between the regime and the (urban) people.
I’m talking about the social pact of “you keep out of politics and we make sure war doesn’t affect your lives” pact that is still very much alive. Russians running away from mobilization means there will be fewer distressed families and communities, thus more of the same passiveness and obedience that we’ve seen for the past 7 months.
More urban Russian men staying in Russia, on the other hand, will increase the distress and discomfort, which could potentially build up into serious social unrest. The good sign is that, with the arsons and the shooting of a conscription officer, the unrest is already building up.
Just like the #visaban movement, the restrained approach toward the anti-mobilization of Russians may appear irrelevant to the war in Ukraine, but it is actually an important step in breaking the social pact that made the genocidal invasion possible in the first place.
AND
SEPTEMBER 24 AT 4:03 AM
#21 Is Ukraine the real Rus’?
Explaining Ukraine’s search for its name and identity, Russia’s imperial appropriation of history, and the complicated legacy of Kyivan Rus’.
A couple of important disclaimers:
The terms “Ukraine” and “Ukrainians” became widely used only in the 19 century. Whenever I refer to “Ukrainians” and “Ukraine” in the context earlier than the 19 century, I actually mean “the people who lived in what is now Ukraine” and “lands that are now Ukraine” respectively.
The same logic applies to the words “Russia” and “Russians.”
Finally, I ask you not to draw mental links between the words “Rus’” and “Russia” from the beginning. Let’s view them completely separately and make connections only as the article progresses. Only by completely deconstructing the modern meanings we can understand how they came to be.
Okay, let’s dig into it.
What does Rus’ even mean?
The background of the word Rus’ is still murky. The most viable hypothesis claims that Rus’ was the name of the Nordic people coming to Constantinople for trade and to serve as mercenaries somewhere around 8 century AD. These tribes had a route “from Varangians to Greeks” going from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea through a system of rivers – and the Dnipro river was their key route.
These Scandinavians called themselves “Rhos,” meaning “rowers” in old Swedish – because that was their profession. This name consistently reappeared in Arabic and Byzantine accounts referring to Scandinavians.
Note: For more info about the connection between the Norse and the Rus’, check out this lecture about the origins of the term Rus’ and the history of Kyivan Rus by Jackson Crawford and Vicki Grove.
As these trade routes were growing, the Scandinavians took control over many city-states along them and established the Rurik dynasty that ruled over the feudal system of duchies spreading from the Baltics to modern-day central and western Ukraine. That’s how Kyiv became a powerful medieval city at the time: as a major trade hub between Constantinople and Northern Europe.
Who were the Rus’ people then?
It’s unclear when and how the name of the Scandinavian rowers transitioned into the proto-ethnic identity of the Slavic tribes. It was probably a result of two processes: the Scandinavian rulers assimilated into Slavic culture, and, in turn, their political power influenced how Slavic tribes identified themselves. The former process is evident in the names of the ruling Rurik dynasty members: typical Scandinavian names like Helgi, Ingvar, and Helga gradually shifted into Slavic names like Svyatoslav, Volodymyr, and Yaroslav throughout the 9-10 centuries. By the end of the 10th century – when Orthodox Christianity was established on a state level – Rus’ became the main pre-modern identity marker widely used across the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and Western parts of Russia.
Rus’ was a very vague identity: it encompassed religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political meanings. For instance, the Orthodox Christians of Poland and Lithuania were widely referred to as the people of the “Rus’ faith” (“Rus’ka vira”).
At the same time, Rus’ identity had nothing to do with the modern term “Russia” – because Russian identity was not yet formed then. The modern “Russian” identity came later in the 18-19 centuries when the legacy of Rus’ was monopolized and appropriated to form the basis for the imperial narrative of Russia.
Still, many people living across the entire North-East Europe who spoke Slavic languages and were of Christian Orthodox faith would consider themselves Rus’ folk up until the 19th century, referring to their religion, language, or culture.
What is the Kyivan Rus’ then?
The “Kyivan Rus’” is a pretty recent term – it was first used by the Russian historians of the 19th century to distinguish the Kyiv-led Rus’ of the 9-13 centuries from the rest of what they called “Russia” (I’ll talk about the appropriation of this later in the text). In reality, nobody ever called that medieval state “Kyivan Rus’” – it was just Rus’, and Kyiv was its capital.
Kyivan Rus’ was a feudal political structure consisting of multiple principalities and spreading from the Baltic Sea coast to the Black Sea in its heyday in the 10-12 centuries. Rus’ was a dominant force on the medieval stage, as it controlled the trade between North-Central Europe and the Byzantine Empire. In the 11-12 centuries, Kyiv was a city of more than 100,000 people, one of the biggest and wealthiest European capitals of the time.
Kyiv’s decline started in the 13 century because of a brutal internal power struggle between princes from all across Rus’ and was complete with the invasion of Mongols that destroyed the city entirely in 1240.
(The oldest surviving map of Kyiv is from the 1638 book Teraturgimy by Kyiv-based monk Atanasiy Kalnofoyskyi)
From Rus’ to Maloros: How did Ukrainians self-identify after Kyivan Rus?
In pre-modern times, multiple ethnic, religious, and linguistic identities existed simultaneously and could be shared by essentially the same folk. That’s exactly what was happening in the scattered lands of ex-Kyivan-Rus’. Everybody knew they were Rus’, but as time went on and political powers shifted, so did the names and meanings.
Still, the name Rus’ and its derivatives dominated for centuries, diverging into multiple local identities and names depending on regions and specific recollections: Chorna Rus’ (Black Rus’), Chervona Rus’ (Red Rus’), Bela Rus’ (White Rus’), and more. The vague and diverse Rus’ identity was still prevalent across the Orthodox Eastern European people: it was the most basic identity marker across Ukraine and Belarus up to the 18 century – up until these lands were colonized by the Russian Empire and their names were established in subordination to the Moscow-centered version of Rus’.
In modern-day Ukraine, another important name shaped up by the 14 century – Mala Rus’ (Lesser Rus’, Little Rus’). As Brian Boeck describes it, “The term Little Russia (Malaia Rossiia, later Malorossiia) originated in Byzantine ecclesiastical circles in the fourteenth century to describe the metropolitanate of Halych (Western Ukraine) and was revived in the early seventeenth century to refer to the Orthodox Kyiv metropolitanate.”
The Mala Rus’ term had no diminishing connotation until the 18 century (quite the opposite – it meant “the core” of the Rus’ land) and was often used by Ukrainians themselves to distinguish them from the rest of the Rus’ki people. However, it was later used by the Russian Empire to emphasize the empire-colony relationships between the hegemon and the subordinate nation. That’s how the Great and Little Russian terminology was established and with time turned into a colonial slur.
How the legacy of Rus’ was appropriated and monopolized by the Russian Empire
To build the imperial myth and feed the narrative of the ancient greatness of Russia, Moscow proclaimed itself the successor of the Byzantine Empire and the Kyivan Rus in the 16-18 centuries. Russian intellectuals of the time presented Kyiv as the “cradle” of three “Russian” peoples: Velykorossy (“Great Russians” – modern-day Russians), Belarusy (“White Russians”), and Malorosy (“Little Russians”). According to this view, when Kyiv fell to the Mongols in 1240 and gradually lost the status of a metropolis, Moscow took over and led the Russian people into greatness.
Consider the case of the Monomakh cap – a monarch’s regalia worn by Russian Tzars between the 14 and 17 centuries and now exhibited in Kremlin. According to the Russian chronicle dating back to the 16 century, the cap is from the 12 century: it was a gift from the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus to Kyiv’s grand prince Volodymyr Monomakh. It was then transferred to Moscow at some point, symbolizing the historic continuity from Constantinople to Kyiv to Moscow.
Except that this is a completely fabricated story. Not only Constantine and Volodymyr lived 50 years apart, but the Monomakh cap itself was actually a Tatar female wedding headdress and was most probably a 14-century gift from the Golden Horde, the overlords of Moscow at the time.
Stories like these, of course, reflect the imperial desires of Russia more than the historic truth. In reality, Kyivan Rus’ disintegrated into many small feudal duchies that never associated themselves with Moscow – from the Galicia-Volhynia Kingdom in Western Ukraine to the ancient Novgorod Republic in the North of modern Russia (burnt into inexistence by Moscow in 1478). When Moscow rose to power and expanded in the 14-16 centuries, it was a completely different political entity living in a different reality. This, however, didn’t stop the Russian Empire from trying to monopolize its claim on the entire legacy of Rus’ – in written and material forms.
Since the 17 century, Russia has stolen numerous archeological, historical, and religious artifacts from Ukraine. Russian Orthodox Church also took away Kyiv’s church autonomy in 1685-1722, turning it into a subordinate structure to Moscow (and not directly to Constantinople) for the first time ever since Rus’ was baptized in Kyiv in 988.
In the end, Ukrainians were cut off from their past, legacy, and name.
Where did “Ukraine” come from?
Simultaneously with the Rus’ identity, a separate name for Ukrainian lands under the Polish crown emerged: Ukraine. The word “Ukraine” first appeared in 1187 referring to a borderland region in the center of modern-day Ukraine. According to Boeck, the term was later revived as “a borderland or frontier used by Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles, the term ukraïna came to encompass the Cossack lands of the Dnieper River basin in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”
Because Ukraine was torn between bigger empires, both Maloros and Ukrainian identities coexisted together without the real agency of Ukrainian people who would largely self-identify as Rus’ or Ruthenian up until the 19 century.
However, throughout the 19 century – in the times when many modern European nations were establishing their national identities – Ukrainian intellectuals gradually and consciously moved away from the Maloros identity and revived and established the idea of the Ukrainian identity that united various people across the Russian and Habsburg Empires.
(“A general plan of the wild fields, or Ukraine” was the first detailed map of what is now Ukraine made in 1648 by French-Polish cartographer Guillaume de Beauplan. Note that the name Ukraine was already used to describe this area of land – although without any ethnic or linguistic connotations.)
Why Ukraine, not Malorossiia or Rus’?
Ukraine had to transform and rethink its name to separate itself from the imperial idea of Russia and from the Polish and Habsburg influence in the western regions.
You see, by the 19 century, Russia had already built its imperial identity by monopolizing the succession rights to Rus’, appropriating the Kyiv statehood’s history, and rewriting their own history altogether. This deeply colonial worldview already had a prescribed place for the ruling “Great Russian” nation, for the non-Slavic colonized people, and for the “younger brothers”: White Russians (Belarusians) and Little Russians (Ukrainians).
That’s why trying to revive the Rus’ identity and compete for it against Moscow was impossible at the time: Russia controlled most of Ukraine and imprisoned anybody who spread such “dangerous” ideas. To continue with the Maloros identity would mean to accept the Russian discourse and accept Ukraine’s place in the larger imperial narrative of Russia.
Moreover, since western Ukraine was a part of the Habsburg Empire up until 1918, the “Maloros” identity would fail to include that part of the population – despite the fact that it shared language, culture, and history with the Russia-colonized lands of Ukraine.
Finally, although only local intelligentsia proudly identified as “Ukrainians” in the middle of the 19 century, they saw the unifying nature of the term “Ukraine”. This was not just an ethnic marker – it was a political term. According to the 19-century Ukrainian intellectual Mykola Kostomarov, “Ukrainian” was “not used in the meaning of a people, it only means the resident of a periphery, it makes no difference whether he is a Pole or Jew, he is an ukrainets if he lives in Ukraine.”
Of course, the word “Ukraine” has gained a lot of new meanings in the last two centuries, but it still carries the civic meaning up to this day – you can be Ukrainian no matter what your ethnic or religious background is.
So, who owns the legacy of Kyivan Rus’?
In a way, the answer to this question is being decided on the battlefield right now.
Since the 18 century, Russia has pushed the narrative of Rus’ as the cradle of three “brotherly nations” with Moscow taking succession from Kyiv as the center of the “Russian World.” While it may sound quite egalitarian and nice on the outside, this view basically says that Russia has the sovereign claim over the Kyivan legacy and that Ukraine and Belarus are forever tied to Russia through these “brotherly” bonds. This view is a cover for a deeply imperialistic worldview, a justification for colonizing and controlling the people of two sovereign countries. And Russia still uses it: Putin refers to the “brotherly nations” narrative and to the idea of Kyiv being the “mother of all Russia cities” in his de-facto declaration of Russia’s territorial aggression against Ukraine.
Ukraine’s idea of Kyivan Rus’ is different. For centuries, the people of Ukraine were cut off from any association with the Kyivan Rus’ – partly because they lacked sovereign political elites and partly because the Russian Empire had already appropriated all of Rus’ history into its own imperial narrative. But at the turn of the 19 and 20 centuries, things began to change.
In 1898, Ukrainian historian and politician Mykhailo Hrushevsky wrote a long and impressive book called The History of Ukraine-Rus’ – establishing the continuity of the nation’s history from Kyivan Rus’ to modern-day Ukrainians (Note how he used both terms Ukraine and Rus’ to link these identities). With more and more history getting uncovered and reviewed, the idea of continuity between the Kyivan Rus’ and the modern Ukrainian state became the new norm.
These days, Ukraine claims that, yes, the Kyivan Rus’ encompasses the histories of multiple nations – but only Ukraine carries the statehood legacy with the center in Kyiv. Russia and Belarus have their part in that story, but their part is similar to that of France or England in Roman history – it’s the part of the different people living under the hegemony of a metropolis. As Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak put it, the Rus’ and Ukraine are like “a caterpillar and a butterfly: they are not identical (caterpillar can’t fly), but there’s a direct link between them.” With that view of Rus’, Ukraine decolonizes its history and challenges the imperial myth of Russia.
This view, of course, infuriates Russia – that is why it is so keen to keep its claim on Kyivan Rus’ alive. Take a bizarre incident when Russia installed an 18-meter-high monument to Volodymyr the Great in the center of Moscow in 2016 – a monument to the Grand Prince of Kyiv who had lived 200 earlier than Moscow was established.
Rus’ and the Russia-Ukraine war
Ukraine’s claim on political sovereignty from Russia – which is the main reason for Putin’s neocolonial invasion of 2022 – includes the claim on Ukraine’s history.
Since the end of the 17 century, Ukrainians have struggled with Moscow’s colonial rule. We’ve been robbed of our chronicles, archives, art, and historical artifacts – Russia has literally drained material history from Ukraine into Moscow and St Petersburg.
Unlike Russia, Ukraine doesn’t want to return to some mythical glory of the past – it looks into the future. However, like any colonized nation, we feel the importance of connecting to the history and identity that was deliberately stolen from us and appropriated by our colonizers.
The victory of Ukraine in this war will make a crucial point: Ukraine is a sovereign nation with its own past and independent future. We are not a chapter in a story of the Russian Empire – we deserve our own story.
Answering the question in the name of this article: “Is Ukraine the real Rus’?” – no, Ukraine is not the real Rus’, because nobody is. Rus’, with its people and language, is long gone, and there's no point in trying to revive it. Ukrainians don't want to start calling ourselves Rus’ and compete for the word “Russia” with Russia (except maybe a couple of weirdos). But we deserve to finally claim the history of our land – by decolonizing our past and defending our future on the battlefield.
AND
SEPTEMBER 15 AT 4:44 AM
#20 Lessons from Ukraine’s counteroffensive (so far)

How the war could end, what Ukrainians are fighting for, and how fragile Russia really is
A summary of Ukrainian’s counteroffensive
Before going through the lessons, let’s run through the basics of what’s happened so far.
Since late August, Ukraine has led the counteroffensive operation on the southern and northeastern frontlines. The initial hype was focused on the Kherson direction, but then last week, Ukraine unexpectedly made an impressive push in the Kharkiv region.
As of September 15, at least 4000 square kilometers have been fully liberated, and 4000 more are being stabilized by Ukrainians right now. Russians have largely fled in panic and left a lot of equipment and people behind them. As a result, Ukraine liberated Kupiansk and Izium, towns crucial for Russia’s military logistics.
Russia’s official statements claim they decided to regroup from the Kharkiv direction to strengthen their Donbas frontline. However, even the top propagandists don’t seem to believe this version of the story.
The counteroffensive is still ongoing, so our ability to draw conclusions is limited.
Still, what are the lessons we can learn from the surprising course of the counteroffensive so far?
It’s not about the land – it’s about the people
As Ukrainians are liberating towns that have lived for months under Russian occupation, we’ve seen tonnes of heartwarming videos with locals welcoming them. That’s what real liberation looks like.
As a Ukrainian, I get flooded with immense joy when I’m watching these videos. I’m happy that these people are alive, that they have survived whatever Russians had been doing there, and that they can now be safe and return to (relative) normalcy and safety.
All these happy moments prove once again what has become clear for Ukrainians, foreign observers, and even Russian propagandists: people across all of Ukraine despise Russians and wait to be liberated by Ukrainians. And it’s Ukraine’s duty to save these people from Russia and the totalitarianism, torture, and genocide it brings to every village it occupies. Every town and village that the Russians reached had torture chambers and mass graves: Ukraine officials have already documented over 1,000 dead civilians in recently liberated Izuym, a town of 50,000.
For Ukraine, this is not a war for land – this is a war for the people and for their lives. Every Ukrainian trapped under Russian occupation deserves to be rescued.
Ukraine can win on the battlefield
Ukraine is still very far from victory. And by victory, I mean the liberation of all Russia-occupied lands since 2014, including the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as Crimea. Add to this the fact that Zelensky and other key government officials have numerously stated that the Ukrainian victory would also include reparations from Russia and an international tribunal for war criminals. Yes, there’s a long road ahead of Ukraine, but the counteroffensive has busted another myth about this war: the myth that Ukraine can’t win on the battlefield.
In spring, Ukraine proved wrong most experts and analysts who had said Ukraine would fall within one week of the invasion. Now, Ukraine has proved wrong skeptics claiming that Ukraine cannot execute a successful offensive operation. The skeptics’ logic was that Ukraine showed it could defend itself – but it had no experience and capacity to re-take the Russia-occupied land. Well, they were wrong. Again.
All of that leads to a clear conclusion: with the help of its allies, Ukraine is capable of beating Russia on the battlefield. Russia is not invincible. In fact, Russia seems to be a systemically overrated military power – and we have yet to discover how fragile it is as the war brings more pressure on Putin’s regime.
Russia only speaks the language of force
Russia will use negotiations to regroup and break any peace deal as soon as it feels powerful enough – the Minsk agreements have shown that. Russia will use land concessions as an invitation to invade further – the West’s initial blind eye on the occupation of Crimea has demonstrated that as well.
The only way Russia can accept the existence of a free and democratic Ukraine is if it’s forced to accept it. And Ukraine’s counteroffensive has proved that, unfortunately, brute force is the only way to liberate millions of people from Russian occupation and make Russia stay away.
Take it from Zelensky himself: “When Russia decided to invade Ukraine, the world didn’t punch them in their mugs, and so Russians went further, and further, and further. Well, we are punching them in their mugs now.”
I understand that this streetfight logic could feel shocking for people living in peaceful democracies. But that’s the reality of Russia that we all have to face. And all those liberated Ukrainians in the Kharkiv region would still be living under Russian occupation if it wasn’t for Ukraine’s army.
Arming Ukraine works
Even before the counteroffensive, it was already clear that the concerns about sending weapons to Ukraine were misplaced. Those who claimed there was no point in arming Ukraine before and after February 24 turned out to be outrageously wrong. Arming Ukraine is the only step that saved millions of Ukrainians from occupation, deportation, arrests, torture, rape, and other horrors of Russia’s genocidal campaign. Nothing else has saved more lives than military help to Ukraine.
But the counteroffensive proved yet more skeptics wrong. For months, we’ve heard occasional conspiracy-style rants claiming that the weapons sent to Ukraine will turn up on the black market and that Ukrainians are a corrupt society that can’t be trusted. The skepticism came from all sides of the political spectrum – from a ****hole of an investigation by CBS to Fox News’ far-right host Tucker Carlson. With the masterful counteroffensive, Ukrainians showed that the West’s military is put to good use.
Paul Massaro, a foreign policy expert and a big friend of Ukraine recently tweeted: “Ukraine is among the most responsible and effective recipients of US security assistance in history. They deserve MUCH more. Every dollar makes the world safer.”
Russians fear humiliation the most
One of the surprising outcomes of the Russian exodus from the Kharkiv region was the reaction it got in Russia. Of course, Russia’s warmongering Telegram channels are outraged by the poor performance of their military and have already got armed with insane conspiracies about thousands of English-speaking NATO soldiers fighting in the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
But even the most institutionalized propagandists and deeply pro-Putin figures like Chechen leader Kadyrov have expressed disappointment and concerns with how the “special military operation” is going.
As Portuguese political consultant Bruno Maçaes put it, it seems like Russia has suddenly synchronized and united – not because their country committed the worst genocide in the 21 century, but at the prospect of getting humiliated. The myth of Russia’s military dominance and, subsequently, the fear of battlefield humiliation seem to be at the core of Russian imperial identity.
Ukraine’s ultimate victory is the collapse of Putin
The further into this war, the clearer it becomes that independent, sovereign Ukraine and Putin’s neocolonial Russia can no longer coexist. The genie is out of the box – and Ukraine will not be safe with Putin’s regime in place. Putin, in turn, cannot sustain his grip over Russia with a humiliating defeat in Ukraine. Something must go. And it’s Ukraine’s and the rest of the democratic world’s duty to make sure Putin’s regime falls.
It may be a new and scary thought, but this idea has been circulating in Ukraine since February 24 – as soon as everybody realized that Putin decided to higher the stakes. Once he did that, there was no going back to the previous status quo. Taras Chmut, the head of the Come Back Alive foundation, recently tweeted: “Ukraine’s ultimate victory is not the return to our 1991 borders. It is also the disintegration of Russia into dozens of independent republics stripped off nuclear status.” Because, at this point, this is the only way Ukraine and many other nations can live safely.
And the recent counteroffensive showed how Putin’s collapse might not be as unrealistic as many experts believe. What’s even more surprising is that the most potent opposition to Putin might emerge from even more fascist and pro-militaristic groups.
But instead of fearing “destabilization,” the rest of the world should prepare for the fall of the Russian fascist regime. As Anne Applebaum recently wrote, “now is the time to ask about the stability of Russia itself and to factor that question into our plans. Russian soldiers are running away, ditching their equipment, asking to surrender. How long do we have to wait until the men in Putin’s inner circle do the same?”
Ukraine will need more help to defend itself
Ukraine’s success is a sign that the current strategy of supporting Ukraine works. But it’s not a sign of Ukraine’s inevitable victory. I’d love for that to be true, but it’s not. The counteroffensive brings us one step closer to victory, but there’s too much yet to be won: from Kherson to Luhansk, from Donetsk to Crimea.
Another dangerously wrong conclusion from the counteroffensive is that the world can slow down on military and political support because, apparently, Ukraine can take it from here. Unfortunately, Ukraine’s capacity to lead the war of attrition is completely dependent on the support coming from outside.
If the counteroffensive carries any conclusion about military support, it’s this: if Europe and the US had been less afraid to arm Ukraine since 2014, the full-scale invasion would have probably not happened. If the Western leaders had sent weapons in the first days of the invasion, tens of thousands of civilian deaths could have been averted. The counteroffensive has shown that the world should continue supporting Ukraine to prevent more human suffering.
Let’s wait until the counteroffensive ends
The counteroffensive is still happening. Yes, it has slowed down, but it is not over yet. It’s too soon to draw definite conclusions about the successes and failures at this point.
I know there are a lot of discussions right now about the counteroffensive being a “potential turning point of this war.” Well, it could be a turning point – or it could not. Wars are nonlinear and poorly predictable.
I think it’s crucial for all of us to stay put and wait for more updates. Until then, let’s just enjoy the feel-good videos of happy folk getting liberated and wish them well.
AND
SEPTEMBER 6 AT 12:00 AM
#19 Why Ukraine was never really that polarized
The story of Ukrainian identity, Russian propaganda, and a troubled Western perspective, or why everybody thought Ukraine was a divided nation
Ukraine’s unity following February 24, 2022
When Russia broke the months-long suspense and invaded Ukraine, Ukrainians held firmly to their ground.
For many international observers, the united resistance of Ukrainians was as surprising as Russia’s back-to-1939 style of invasion. After all, Ukraine had always been described as a troubled, polarized society with pressing linguistic and ethnic divisions and a critically low level of trust in government.
How could such a divided society create a nationwide volunteer resistance overnight? How can it keep resisting for six months with no visible signs of division? I mean, after all the horrors of war and personal tragedies, 90% of Ukrainians believe in victory over Russia.
To answer these questions, we need to step back and review the entire notion of Ukraine being a polarized society.
The fundamental values of Ukrainians
The point here is this: Ukraine is not nearly as polarized as it had often been portrayed.
Mainstream media outlets usually mention Ukraine in times of crisis, unrest, and political turmoil. But despite being consistently depicted as a divided nation, Ukrainians’ fundamental views and attitudes are quite consistent across all regions.
Here’s a brief description of Ukrainians’ values map by Kyiv-based sociologist Tymofii Brik (this Twitter thread of his is an absolute goldmine!):
“Low trust to gov, high trust to family and friends, moderate openness and Self-Enhancement. High Conservation and Self-transcendence, lower "openness to new experience" but caring for others (WVS).”
Ukrainians “care about their closest and value safety & survival before hedonism, trying new, innovations.”
Those are universal features for people from the Carpathians to Donbas – there aren’t “two Ukraines” when it comes to some of the most fundamental values. Even the electorate of Zelensky and Poroshenko scored pretty closely on these indicators during the 2019 elections – showing that political divisions in Ukraine are not different sets of values colliding – and more about personalities and trust. But we’ll get there later.
Languages and ethnicity in Ukraine
No other topics have suffered more from manipulations than the languages and ethnicities of Ukraine. So let’s just run through some of the loudest myths and facts.
Yes, Ukraine is a deeply bilingual country. Practically all people know both Ukrainian and Russian languages, and most speak both languages all the time, depending on the context. In 2021, 46% of the population mainly spoke Ukrainian in their daily lives, 26% spoke mostly Russian, and 27% spoke both languages. So 27% of people use both languages every day of their lives – it is a huge number of totally bilingual people.
No, the language you speak says nothing about your ethnicity or political views in Ukraine. With 26% Russian speakers nationwide and 27% bilinguals, there were just ~15% of ethnic Russians in Ukraine in 2011. Also, the largest pro-Russian political party had only 9.5% of public support in February 2022 (and yes, this party was assembled from the ruins of the infamous Party of Regions – the one that was led by Victor Yanukovych).
On a personal level, I get furious when someone mixes up language and ethnicity. I am a bilingual Ukrainian raised in a Russian-speaking family – and our family has always identified as Ukrainian and never felt Russian in any way. Linking Russian speakers to the “Russian world” is an old colonial trick used by Moscow to justify its territorial claims. Russia, however, shouldn’t have a monopoly on the Russian language.
Note: If you want to know more about how Russian-speaking Ukrainians appeared – I told a detailed story of how my family of Ukrainian-speaking farmers turned into Russian-speaking Kyivites over the last 100 years in this Twitter thread.
No, there is no Russian-speaking East and Ukrainian-speaking West. The truth is more nuanced. Western Ukraine is predominantly Ukrainian-speaking, the center is mostly Ukrainian-speaking with many bilinguals, and southern and eastern are mostly bilingual with many Russian speakers.
In regions with high bilingualism and Russian-speaking rates, another distinct pattern emerges: cities are significantly more Russian-speaking than rural areas. Russian was the language of education, career, and public use – it was imposed as the language of the elites for centuries under the empire and for decades under the Soviets. Although the Ukrainian language has made tremendous progress in cities in the last 20 years, the echoes of the old colonial legacy are still there.
And no, Russian is not spoken across Ukraine because of intertwined ethnicities and histories – it is the direct result of Russia’s centuries-long assimilation policies that tried to destroy Ukrainian identity.
Ukraine is a mix of different folk with large communities of Russians, Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Poles, Bulgarians, Jews, Greeks, and other ethnicities. Still, 82% of the population identified as Ukrainian back in 2011 (unfortunately, we don’t have more recent reliable data that would include Crimea and all parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions). Because of all the mixing up and shared colonized past, the Ukrainian national identity is more civic in nature than that of many other European nations.
Locality and trust in Ukrainian society
The idea that the West and the East of Ukraine are dramatically different is a brutal simplification. There are no “two Ukraines” – because there are many of them. All across our country, multiple regional identities flourish all while viewing themselves as parts of a larger Ukrainian nation. Locality does not mean division.
This locality could be explained by our colonized history: because Ukrainians have been in the middle of larger powers for the last 500 years, we have learned to never trust anyone in power – and to always identify with and rely on the people nearby. Because people in power always wanted to profit off of us, and only locally elected leaders could be trusted.
That locality also explains why Ukraine has always had such a low rate of trust in government. Paradoxically for many foreigners, Ukrainians have always valued their right to choose their representatives and be suspicious of them the second the new government is voted into office.
That has enabled Ukraine to quickly react to any politician's attempts to usurp power (wink-wink, mister Yanukovych), but it has also been a huge obstacle to creating sustainable trust between the people and the state.
Unfortunately, Ukraine’s local diversity has often been weaponized to seed more suspicion toward nationwide politicians of any sort.
Ukraine’s polarized geopolitics and how Russia fixed that
Probably the only aspect where Ukraine became truly polarized by the early 2010s was the question of geopolitics. Should we integrate into the European Union, or are we better off with Russia? For many Ukrainians in the southern and eastern regions – because of the deeper history of colonialism there and intertwined family ties – this was a tough choice before 2014. Western Ukraine, falling under Moscow rule only after 1945, had more ties with the neighboring Eastern European states.
And for years, Ukraine has been at a crossroads – always declaring its European ambitions but also always stressing the need to keep the “brotherly friendship” with Russia. Of course, all politicians tried to manipulate this divide to their electoral advantage – and demonized the other side of the argument.
In 2011, 52% of Ukrainians supported joining the EU, and only 24% supported NATO membership. But then Yanukovych's authoritarian ambitions and Russia’s direct aggression fixed this debate. Support for Ukraine joining the EU has grown from 49% in 2014 to 91% in 2022. Support for joining NATO has grown from just 34% in 2014 to 68% in 2022.
Ironically, Putin has consolidated all Ukrainians the way nobody had ever done before.
So why was Ukraine believed to be deeply polarized?
As I have outlined, Ukraine is a diverse, complicated nation. And where there is complexity, there is manipulation. Especially if there’s a giant neocolonial power planning to destroy you. The myth of Ukraine’s polarization was propelled by two forces: Russia and the Western ignorance of Ukraine.
Russia has long weaponized the questions of history and identity to reinforce division and fear in the colonized societies. It has continuously done so in Ukraine, the Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia, and many other states.
Ukraine itself never suspected it was polarized until way into the mid-2000s. But around the time of the Orange Revolution, the Party of Regions and other pro-Russian forces started putting up billboards and TV ads spreading fears that the “Westerners” want to ban the Russian language and cancel everything Soviet, especially the great WWII victory of “our grandfathers.” Political talk shows – huge in Ukraine in the 2000s – began to talk about the East and the West, focusing on scandalous, fearmongering topics. As the 2010 elections approached, people in Kyiv were worried that the “Donetsk people” would raid Kyiv once Donbas-born Yanukovych was in power.
The peak polarization was probably in 2010 when Tymoshenko and Yanukovych went for a tight presidential race, winning majority votes in the North-West and South-East, respectively. Yanukovych won by a fine margin: 49 to 46 percent. We all know how his term ended.
We now know that Yanukovych’s Party of Regions was practically a Russian force penetrating Ukrainian politics. Russia pushed Yanukovych to suddenly turn away from signing an agreement with the EU in the autumn of 2013 and then directly assisted in evacuating Yanukovych to Russia on February 21, 2014 – when the police turned the months-long Maidan protest into a bloodbath.
Through control over Ukraine’s politicians, oligarchs (remember: up until recently, Medvechuk, one of Ukraine’s most powerful oligarchs and media tycoons was literally a godfather of Putin’s daughter), and oligarch-owned media outlets, Russia attempted to create culture wars and moral panics, thus stagnating Ukraine’s progress into a European democracy, and keeping it a subordinate state. Look no further than Lukashenko’s Belarus for a perfect reference of what Putin wanted Ukraine to be.
And until February 24, 2022, Russia pretty much succeeded in spreading the “divided Ukraine” narrative.
Western (mis)understanding of Ukraine
Russian propaganda is only part of the problem.
Another part boils down to this: Western experts failed to see Ukraine as a political subject rather than Russia’s long-term satellite state. Without attributing agency to the Ukrainian people, it’s pretty easy to ignore the complexity of Ukraine’s past and present, and to keep telling a simplified story about a country being ripped apart by the West and the East, by Ukrainian and Russian speakers (or maybe those are ethnic Russians? Who knows? Let’s ask our Moscow-based correspondent).
In that sense, the Russia-centered studies of Eastern Europe have dramatically failed to see Ukraine as an independent society deciding its path and to recognize Russia for what it has become – a fascist autocracy.
That’s why Ukraine’s pro-European advancements were often seen as a result of the geopolitical influence of the West and not as a genuine desire for a free and sovereign nation. That’s also why Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism was so hard to crack without getting stuck in the narratives created and promoted by the USSR and then Russia.
The only good news here is that, finally, Russian colonialism and the agency of Eastern European nations are slowly being reconsidered. For instance, we finally see toxic and deeply biased reports on Ukraine get absolutely smashed by Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians. Yes, I’m talking about Amnesty International’s now infamous “But Ukrainian soldiers are endangering ordinary people by resisting Russian occupation” piece.
What fills me with optimism is the new sense of solidarity and agency that has emerged across all nations that experienced Russian colonialism at some point in their histories. I do hope that this inherently anti-colonial force will shape the West’s future policy and ideology regarding Russia.
How Russia used the polarization myth to invade Ukraine
In 2022, it’s easy to forget how long Russia denied any involvement in other countries’ businesses and staged internal crises to legitimize its concerns and, in the case of Georgia, direct military involvement. Ukraine has suffered from these tactics since 2014.
Russia first faked a referendum in Crimea in 2014 to “legitimately” break it away from Ukraine and “apply” for becoming a part of Russia. All this was done to create an image of divided people seeking sovereignty and self-determination – all while Russian special forces occupied all administrative buildings in Crimea and gave direct orders to local authorities.
In Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Russia played the polarization card to first deny its involvement (“it’s the locals rebelling against the Kyiv tyranny!”), and then to justify it (“we had to stabilize the situation and defend the Russian-speaking population of Donbas”).
Time and again, Russia managed to trick a large portion of the world into “bothsidesism” and “West vs East” narratives when describing what was clearly an act of territorial aggression.
To understand what I’m talking about, take a look at this BBC “deep dive” into the Donbas war from 2015. Notice how much focus is dedicated to the “rebels” and “pro-Russian activists” and how Russia is portrayed as almost a mere observer of these events?
How Ukrainians felt unity following February 24
Ukrainians – after living through two revolutions and an invasion in the last 20 years – like to describe themselves this way:
Ukrainians can’t agree on anything in their everyday life but almost automatically unite on all levels once they face a serious crisis.
I think there’s some truth in that. Ukrainian identities are diverse, highly localized, and equally don’t trust any authority – but all these identities are united by a universal will to decide for themselves how to live on their land.
Once there was a force willing to wipe out everything we had built and take away our right to choose our fate, Ukrainians united against this force.
There’s still a lot of work to be done to foster trust in Ukraine. And I hope that Ukrainians will find a way to trust our representatives and institutions – and our politicians will also raise their standards as a result of this war. I also hope that the Russian invasion will once and for all put an end to the myth of the divided Ukrainian nation.
Stas
 
 

All war is sacrifice.  It is a bad thing if people forget that sacrifice for a greater good is an ongoing requirement in order to sustain their way of life.  
Or they could use a “great peace” to completely forget that, get rich off human insecurities and raise generations of “me-centric” entitlement (i.e. “sacrifice is for others) who believe that their last selfie is a great work of art and they should get a participant medal for everything.
Now I know this is a gross oversimplification, plenty of the last generations are doing great things.  However, after watching democracy wither largely because people don’t bother to show up, and now an egregious embolden act of war against the west by Russia that is becoming “boring”; I am concerned to say the least.
I too hope for a Rousseau-like state and an end to war but until that day comes we all need to be ready to pay the bill when it comes due.

I get the "terror strikes" component to put pressure on the Ukrainian government - problem is, when has "terror" or "shock and awe" ever really worked as strategy?
Human beings are a funny bunch, we exist in imaginary social constructs - nations, provinces, duchies, towns, neighborhoods etc.  We invented these structures to sustain order when our populations expanded well beyond what we were originally designed for - but here is something I have suspected for a long time: we are still wired for our real social structures.  Those few dozen people we are directly linked to by blood or dependency.  
These are little social bubbles - hell in the pandemic we could map them - that comprise the real ocean of humanity.  We actually care about them.  These are the people we go to war for, we also go to work well after we want to for them.  We get dragged to church on Sunday by them and we dress like them, talk them and eat like them.  We buy the same stuff, dress the same way and consume the same information, thru the similar lenses.  We are still really tribal after all this time.
Now the energy in those bubbles is incredibly powerful - like running into a burning building, powerful.  However, it is also incredibly local.  We hunker down in our particular tree and tend to keep our heads down, even when the tree next to us gets chopped down.  It takes a lot to get us all going in the same direction.  We invent all sorts of mechanisms to create and generate power from these little bubbles - the Chinese did a massive and brutal social engineering exercise in the 60's to try and re-build those bubbles in such a way as to give the state all the power...it did not work because people. 
So what? Shock and awe, terror strikes and what not, have an effect but it is 1) very hard to line up in the direction you may want it to go, in fact it might create massive counter pressure (see The Blitz 1940) and 2) getting that effect to translate broadly across and entire macro-social system can be very hard, even impossible under some circumstances. 
Humans are highly unpredictable - I think we talked about 3rd order chaotic systems - and as such lobbing really expensive and limited missiles at them to get them to do anything in concert as a primary strategy...well it is not optimal.  Sociologist have no idea how "Springs, revolutions or movements" really happen.  We can see them easily in hindsight but predicting them ahead of time is nearly impossible right now.  So what magically triggers things like The Crusades or Hippies is really difficult - a sum of pressures and human turbulence that is highly unpredictable, and people have spent empires trying to crack that Riddle of Flesh.  
If Russian power brokers sat down and figured "we will simply hit them with missiles and they will all give up" then they are 1) complete amateurs, and 2) dangerous amateurs who do not really understand the dynamics of application of military power against human-based social structures - s'ok, they are not alone in this. 
My point is that they should have been looking at military impact if they wanted to win a war, and it is likely too late to "get smart" now if they could.   Directly impacting micro-social Will is a game for subversive warfare, not missiles and Russia clearly mis-read what war it was in, and now has to come to terms with how to lose it.

Panzermartin. The constant in your posts on this subject, as far as I have seen, is that you make no firm claims that you back up with facts. You merely apply a constant pressure of “what if”, “what about”, “maybe”. When you have been called out here you have back off, graciously waving a hand - “oh I was only voicing a thought - but I do understand your opinion”. But you don’t qualify your opinion, instead you merely shift focus - sliding sideways.
Personally I am immensely grateful for this forum precisely because it is not defined by people posting half baked opinions and then just leaving them. Instead real facts, as good as we can get them, are being weighed and analysed, and informed conclusions/assumptions made from from that.
The thing is, in July 2022 we are now beyond talking nice and moral ambiguities with russia . This is full on Germany 1939 with all the bells and whistles. We see all the signs of violent authoritarianism, in what is being said and in whats is being done. That really is all there is to it. How russia, and it’s supporters, rationalises it’s actions is now irrelevant, it is merely the words of a abuser/killer in action. Talking about justice for the perpetrator in that context is to insult and co-abuse the victims.
If I may suggest, or indeed urge: Take a stand, for or against - completely. This is now, or will be, a matter of supporting or opposing the 21st century equivalent of Nazi Germany. It defines you in the eyes of others.
And by the way, showing a “generous understanding” for the opponent’s strong emotions, his/her “personal” side, is front and center in the textbook of social media tactics. I mean, we all know that “hysterics” can not possibly be correct. So lets really highlight that bit in in the mass of facts that the other party produces.
Over and out.