Kinophile

Like a dangerous lesbian with a long stick, of course.

I do wonder if Ukraine will continue the same operational approach to counter offensives as in 2022. 2023 feels like a very beast, slouching towards Bethlehem...

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1634799680126058502.html Did someone already post this?

https://www.google.com/maps/@48.5927223,37.996186,3a,68.6y,169.05h,68.18t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOm-n4gee_mg8oTcc3uIl0aNBYz-dcde9W7f9y8!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOm-n4gee_mg8oTcc3uIl0aNBYz-dcde9W7f9y8%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya240-ro0-fo100!7i8192!8i4096!5m1!1e4 Superb bird's eye (NOT satellite or aerial) view of Bakhmut. Drone cpature, about 100m up, 360 degs. You can see the huge difference in urban landscape from the East side of Bakhmut (low villages, as @Grigbnoted) versus the much dense, heavier and taller urban terrain on the west side. The Bakhmut river is pretty minor and not a continuous barrier. Considering the Ivan has paid staggering losses for essentially low-tier light urban suburbs, and took them months to fight through, how much will they pay to get to the city center? Im betting its operationally significant, where they've burnt out the first wave of their "winter" offensive and now face losing the second in the mince-meat maker west of Bakhmut.

But that still underlines my first point- democratic societies can adjust, its systemic to the concept. Autocratic systems find it extremely hard to do so, also systemically. Repeated military defeats will stress any society, with democratic ones better able to release the pressure and shift form/priorities. They are also able to shift priorities without military disaster, often avoiding the geopolitical pitfalls that autocratic societies often back themselves into. WRT Russia, I'm deeply skeptical that any replacement system, arrangement of regions, coalitions, whatever will be democratic in nature, or if starting out so will last very long in that formatting.

Y'all missed the basic difference that drove how a society adjusted (or didn't) to its new situation - regular democratic changes in home government. The response was systematic based, not esoteric personal ideas of how societies respond. This allowed the original governing elite to be replaced, then their replacements swapped for people more focussed on Home, ad infinitum. That process or churn at the top allows a society to steadily shift and adjust, responding (eventually) to new realities with new governance. A good example is France and its colonial Holdings ( @Taranis et al feel free to pile in here). France fought extremely fiercely to retain its empire but the inevitable change in government led to similar inevitability in its adjustment to reality, and the eventual withdrawal from many overseas colonies. The malleability of democracy was in play, with Change being accepted by and operating on the society at large as Opportunity. But autocratic governments hate Change as a core principle. Change is unknowable in the final extant of its effects, making it a Threat. Ref France, the attempted coup to stop France abandoning Algeria was driven by autocratic aversion to Change among the military elite. Any Government that includes the Military priorities in its final decision making is always autocratic and averse to change. Examples flood history and it can really be counted a truism of Humanity,with the 600lb gorilla example being the USSR (wartime Deomcracies don't count, as when the War is over the Deomcracy unbekts itself, with consequent Change). Each time an autocratic government is forced to change it ceases to function, locks up and, inevitably, replaced. For Autocracy this equals death (often literally). In Democracy, change is how it works, there's no penalty for it so there's no excessive friction against it (we can get into Lib. V. Cons and paths to autocracy separately).M onarchy is autocratic in nature and extremely averse to Change (La Guillotine being a salient example why! ). So for a society to adjust to change its government must be anything but autocratic. And with Russia's track record, I deeply doubt any replacing government to Putin's regime or system will be non-autocratic, so true change in its geopolitical outlook will be unlikely, if not impossible.

ChrisO pointing out just how widespread and growing are the internal complaints from Mobiks. I mean cry me a river, not one is saying stop the war, it's wrong, so I've very limited, ie none, concern about them being sent to "senseless slaughter" in "pointless assaults". The whole goddamn war is senseless and pointless. So, good to get visuals on the growing stress points. Its an excellent thread, and in summary:

Dara Massicot on missile strikes

Lol

But that's my point. An "apparent" ZSU offensive.

I think you have that backwards, Tbh. If your true prize is Melitopol then you don't want the MoD paying any attention there, at all. You want to make it easy for them to make a mistake and misdirect their reserves posture, ie to the North. So you could push hard back into Luhansk, encouraging the Ivan to fight there as its CoG is just south, at Donetsk. But you also amp up corroding the logistics infrastructure around Melitopol. This both "softens" the target and encourages the MoD to naturally focus and develop its LoCs further north, shifting yet more personell and gear up there. Once committed up there then you hit to Melitopol, right to the coast.

The deep irony of course being that in prison they'll still be vulnerable to being "volunteered" for combat, and the Russian state being the vindictive a$$holes with long memories that they are..., well...

I suspect any staggered withdrawal will be "hidden" behind apparent local offensive(s), which will switch to staged rear guard actions as the bubble contracts.

Spuds. Enjoy and no you don't get dessert.

FWIW I expect to see a lot of these videos, but in Russian, in the Summer and no "trying". Ukraines time is coming, it's...inevitable.

Weiss WURST FTFW! OMG I love that stuff That activates an insane amount of memories from Hamburg.

It feels like Russias institutional leadership deficiencies leave it far more vulnerable to a decap campaign than Ukraine would be. The Ivan clearly has some capable and adaptable brigade/div level leaders, who are able to handle tough, complex situations, despite getting shafted by higher ups. But they're the exception not the rule, whereas imaginative, adaptive, cooperative and realistic leadership seems the cultural tend within the mid-level ZSU commands. Keeping older mindsets is viewed as unwanted and detrimental to the war effort, versus the AFRF mentality of Don't Rock The System. The distributed, self-initiallzing nature of a lot of the UKR resistance lends itself to a very active and independent leadership style, from the lowest level upwards, something quite anathema to the Russian MoD and Putin's regime in general. A concerted campaign corroding Russian brig/div level leadership could have disproportionate effect on the Russian forces adaptation to escalating operational situations. Easier said than done, but still, a distinct vulnerability.

That's NUTS

German engineering without the German military beaurocracy... https://en.defence-ua.com/industries/ukraine_may_get_rheinmetall_armor_plant_and_new_lynx_120_combat_vehicle_on_top_a_hybrid_of_leopard_2_and_lynx_ifv-5955.html **** yeah. Still, it's large scale drone manufacturing they need as well.

Exactly. But in fairness, my quote of 10k in Jan is quite possibly far off, and Feb for sure it's possible to hit 20k total for RUS. But 100k in a month is essentially 33% of the Russian expeditionary force and basically the immediate end of the war that very month. I don't see any ability on the part of the ZSU to inflict that level in that timeframe. Of course, an actual, Real(tm) collapse of the AFRF could generate some crazy figures (I highly doubt the ZSU would sit back and just let the collapse unfold)

There would be a lot of non-combat civilians in that traffic...

Once you break the seal... https://mil.in.ua/en/news/the-united-kingdom-will-double-the-number-of-challenger-2-tanks-transferred-to-ukraine/

Your math is suspect my friend.... January was about 2000 dead, 6-8k wounded, I believe. 100,000 is WW2 scale and equivalent to 1/3 of their current force...in a month.

The AFRF can fail for a long time and still do a tremendous amount of damage on the dwnslope...

Nicely timed to contrast with @The_Capt here is a military that is succeeding at all 5 sectors and has a component that is going to town on Development - not just tech advances but deep rethink of theory, it's function, its format and mission profiling. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2023/03/03/how-the-marine-corps-plans-to-remake-its-logistics-personnel/ I've been very interested in this MC rethink, especially due to it being almost 180 degs of its current formatting. The logistics of supporting that new approach have been contentious since Berger startrd prodding things, and fairly so. Naturally this article is a skimmer, not in depth, but the principles for adjustment of the train is very interesting, as it's driven by the assumption of being vulnerable far further back than is currently assumed for a western force. Yes things are different for a maritime oriented force, but per the range of hostile striking abilities, exposure to ISR, loitering /opportunistic munitions, Berger is looking at the future war from the correct side of Boom - supply. For Ukraine, thus would be a very good mentality to start with, after the war, because yes the West was here for this invasion. But there's no Guarantee it will be for the next, and functionally all of Ukraine is in range of both Russian munitions and ISR. They're **** at the latter today, but blind assumptions are the gravestones of success. (Im assuming it will be a long time before UKR is actually in NATO).