Centurian52

Two very important points.  While I hope as much as anyone that the RA experiences a systemic collapse mid- to late-August, if not then this will be a long war.

In a very hopeful counterpoint, Turkey has lifted it's opposition to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.  I assume Turkey got what it wanted, but in any event this is a fantastic development for containing Russia.

https://nationalpost.com/news/nato-to-boost-rapid-reaction-force-ukraine-military-support
 

Kofman on a tweet storm. A few nuggets:
The Russian goal in Donbas is likely to setup a battle for Slovyansk/Kramatorsk, with an axis of advance from Izyum and another from the east, assuming they were able to get past Bakhmut. This objective appears aspirational at best. The offensive in this part of the battlefield is likely to drag on, perhaps well into July or August. Though both sides are liable to become exhausted due to losses of manpower and materiel. Kherson is where a future UA counter offensive could play out. Despite the present focus on the Donbas, economically and strategically Kherson is more significant, and it is where UA ability to conduct offensive operations will likely be tested in the future. The general lack of force availability (on both sides) has forced this into an attrition war. The Russian military holds a substantial advantage in fires, although not a dramatic advantage in manpower and materiel, hence a lack of momentum in operations. The Russian mil is using LDNR as dismounted infantry, and trying to cobble the rest together (VDV, Motor rifle units, Wagner formations) into groups capable of offensive maneuver. They shift more capable forces around the battlefield to attempt localized advances. On the UA side, significant losses in recent months have led to a growing dependence on territorial defense forces and lower quality replacements. However, the situation does not suggest UA forces are anywhere near collapse in the Donbas. Ukrainian discourse in recent weeks had begun to paint a bleak picture in part to motivate faster delivery of Western military aid. UA is in a capability trench, low on ammunition, with losses mounting, in need of artillery & MLRS to attain some parity in an attrition war. HIMARS will allow UA to conduct strikes at tactical-operational depths, hitting Russian logistics & C2. But this capability is being provided in installments and the impact could be greatest when it is first introduced, before Russian forces attempt to adapt. Overall, local mil balance in Donbas favors Russia, but long term trends still favor Ukraine. However, that estimate is conditional on sustained Western military assistance, and is not necessarily predictive of outcomes. This is likely to be a protracted war.  
 

probably true, but we can't fix Russia.  The Russian people will have to do that.  However the damage Putin is doing now will last a generation.  Russia defaulting now means capital investment will take decades to get over this.  meanwhile Ukraine will rebuild economically and politically, have years to really retool their military from the lessons learned in this war and likely have joined NATO and Russia will be even weaker than it was before this war - meaning it will be a long time before Russia is again a threat to anyone.

I suspect that we are agreeing loudly in many regards.
There is no way to tie this up neatly - we can define Endstates, we then have to negotiate with them continuously.  In fact all parties will need to.
There is "taking Russia down", and then there is "taking Putin down" the man and his cronies are not the Russian state.  There is no way we can renormalize with the current Russian regime...none.  If we do we abandon the modern rules of war completely, we admit that there is no global order nor are we its champions; the impacts of this are profound.
If Putin stays in power we will likely isolate Russia completely - Europe is already on a one way trip to doing this.  We will not be lifting sanctions and Russia is very likely to become weaker and more vulnerable over time.  Militarily we will box Russia in and continue to compress - plan for that is already in motion.  Russians will eventually have to decide how much pain they can take - so you are correct in it being an internal decision.  Internal mechanism can be "encouraged" by external forces, plenty evidence of this and we will do this as well.  So Endstate = Russia: Contracted, Compressed, Constrained and Contained...until Russia finds, or is assisted in finding, an SOB we can actually work with.
I am not sure what part of this is "neat little bow".

I think I revised down to 2 weeks at my most pessimistic, but mostly I figured about a month and a half. That's the timeframe I thought it would take them to take eastern Ukraine. I didn't think they would try to take anything west of the Dnieper, or attempt to storm any dense urban areas, since it would be too costly (I did expect heavy Russian casualties). I also didn't expect them to begin their attack at the start of mud season.
So clearly I'm not terribly good at making predictions either. I gave the Russians too much credit, the Ukrainians too little credit, and I didn't anticipate the extent of western support. But at least I can claim a certain amount of predictive high ground over the people who expected Ukraine to fold in two or three days.
edit: As far as predicting where things go from here, I think I am in the collapse camp, as opposed to the perpetually frozen-front camp. I think the one thing that could have saved the Russian war effort was an early mobilization. And I think it is now too late for Russia to mobilize. It would take months for reinforcements to start showing up, even without considering that the Russians have now gutted their training throughput by committing the third battalions, and I don't think they have that long before their forces collapse. In any case, I can hardly think of anything more likely to kick the pace of western support into high gear than an announcement of Russian mobilization, and the Ukrainians already have a head start on training on western equipment.

I think maybe something like T-90AM with the modernized ERA on the turret could probably stop it somewhat. Without ERA I dont think so. Who knows about Western MBTs, and how much better they could be after ERA slapped on them too. M1A2 TUSK 2 in CMBS weighs 63 tons. I think Leopard 2A6 might be a touch over that, and Challenger 2 is definitely over that. So it wouldn't be too outlandish to assume their turret armor might be a bit better or equal on the front, and could stand a chance too. I know for a fact the Western MBTs dont penetrate each other very quickly in CMSF2.
I don't understand what the "stick" part of this is. As far as I know this is my limited understanding of how apfsds works:

and nothing really stood out to me when looking at blueprints. Maybe the stick is on the bottom of the rod,  above where the reusable primer would be?
 
The KF51 is supposed to be somewhat light at 59 tons despite the new gun. I wonder if they are aiming for a new approach, similar to CV90 which was designed with high operational/tactical mobility in mind.

I always feel a strong pang of guilt whenever I hear about or see videos of the International Legion for not rushing over to do my part for Ukraine. I have to keep reminding myself that my knees are no longer fit for war (if this war had broken out ten years ago I would already be over there).

I always feel a strong pang of guilt whenever I hear about or see videos of the International Legion for not rushing over to do my part for Ukraine. I have to keep reminding myself that my knees are no longer fit for war (if this war had broken out ten years ago I would already be over there).

I'd argue that there is also a 100% rational principle at stake here. Continuing the war until Ukraine has regained, at a minimum, all of its pre-Feb 24 territory (preferably all of its pre-2014 territory) may prolong the current war and postpone peace in the short term. But I feel it is important for assuring peace in the long term. Russia cannot be allowed to gain anything from this war, or even be able to credibly claim that it has gained anything. The message not only to Russia, but also to all future potential aggressors, should be aggression does not pay.

Reassuring remarks from Lloyd Austin. Hopes for tomorrow's donors conference are high!
 

I always feel a strong pang of guilt whenever I hear about or see videos of the International Legion for not rushing over to do my part for Ukraine. I have to keep reminding myself that my knees are no longer fit for war (if this war had broken out ten years ago I would already be over there).

I'd argue that there is also a 100% rational principle at stake here. Continuing the war until Ukraine has regained, at a minimum, all of its pre-Feb 24 territory (preferably all of its pre-2014 territory) may prolong the current war and postpone peace in the short term. But I feel it is important for assuring peace in the long term. Russia cannot be allowed to gain anything from this war, or even be able to credibly claim that it has gained anything. The message not only to Russia, but also to all future potential aggressors, should be aggression does not pay.

That is so ridiculous.  Basically the reporter involved is talking to people that really aren't living in reality, which means they are some pundit type I suppose.  I subscribe to NYT but there war coverage can sometimes really be infantile.  Yes, this could happen.  Except that Lyschansk and Kramatorsk are 100X harder to take than Severodonetsk unless the cities are cut off.  Of course, the only forces available to do the cutting off..... are getting severely depleted in Severodonetsk and will face worse as they try to advance out of Izyum & Popasne.  As if losing this city means some kind of amazing breakthrough.  REPORTER, LOOK AT  A MAP.  geeeeez

🔬🔭 I found something 🔬🔭
Objective:
So, I was playing around with Google Trends to see if I could find a meaningful comparative statistic for Google searches from Russia using "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") and "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine"), and that didn't bring anything up. Instead, I stumbled upon this.
Methodology:
I looked up Google Trends data from Russia for Google searches for the last three months using "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") and "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine").
Findings:
Here are the top five subregions of Russia searching for "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") on Google for the last three months:
1. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
2. Belgorod Oblast
3. Buryatia
4. Bryansk Oblast
5. Jewish Autonomous Oblast [It is Russian populated; Jews are only 1% of the population today.]
Here are the top five subregions of Russia searching for "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine") on Google for the last three months:
1. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
2. Kostroma Oblast
3. Buryatia
4. Kamchatka Krai
5. Belgorod Oblast
Moreover, Moscow and St. Petersburg ranked 56th and 55th among Russia's 83 subregions searching for "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") [Since this is the politically correct form, this would include searches by liberals and dissidents.], and they ranked 58th and 75th among the 83 subregions searching for "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine").
Discussion:
Since Belgorod and Bryansk border Ukraine, heightened interest in the war is to be expected. Otherwise, we see that those most actively searching for information on events in Ukraine since the start of the war are far-flung regions where a large percentage of the population are professional military [Kostroma isn't far-flung, but it's piss-poor, and home to a VDV regiment that got wiped out early in the war.], and also the ethnic minority Buryatia and Chukotka, where at least the former are known to have taken very heavy losses in Ukraine. That these regions are actively searching for information on Google can be seen as an indication that they do not trust and/or are not satisfied with the information from the Russian press, and search results from Yandex.
Conversely, Moscow and St. Petersburg seem to have relatively little interest in the war beyond the official channels, in spite of their large populations.
Conclusion:
The war is having an unequal impact on Russian society and Russia's diverse regions, and this is already manifesting itself objectively via online data.
@LongLeftFlank

I'd argue that there is also a 100% rational principle at stake here. Continuing the war until Ukraine has regained, at a minimum, all of its pre-Feb 24 territory (preferably all of its pre-2014 territory) may prolong the current war and postpone peace in the short term. But I feel it is important for assuring peace in the long term. Russia cannot be allowed to gain anything from this war, or even be able to credibly claim that it has gained anything. The message not only to Russia, but also to all future potential aggressors, should be aggression does not pay.

I think I revised down to 2 weeks at my most pessimistic, but mostly I figured about a month and a half. That's the timeframe I thought it would take them to take eastern Ukraine. I didn't think they would try to take anything west of the Dnieper, or attempt to storm any dense urban areas, since it would be too costly (I did expect heavy Russian casualties). I also didn't expect them to begin their attack at the start of mud season.
So clearly I'm not terribly good at making predictions either. I gave the Russians too much credit, the Ukrainians too little credit, and I didn't anticipate the extent of western support. But at least I can claim a certain amount of predictive high ground over the people who expected Ukraine to fold in two or three days.
edit: As far as predicting where things go from here, I think I am in the collapse camp, as opposed to the perpetually frozen-front camp. I think the one thing that could have saved the Russian war effort was an early mobilization. And I think it is now too late for Russia to mobilize. It would take months for reinforcements to start showing up, even without considering that the Russians have now gutted their training throughput by committing the third battalions, and I don't think they have that long before their forces collapse. In any case, I can hardly think of anything more likely to kick the pace of western support into high gear than an announcement of Russian mobilization, and the Ukrainians already have a head start on training on western equipment.

I don't think it is a misstep, it's rather a collateral damage caused by overall extremely effective strategy. The way people all over Europe are putting pressure on the leaders is tremendous, and regarding the military support specifically, the support is only getting bigger(yes, I'm thinking of Germany   but not only). 
OTOH, a lot of people, our great community included to a degree, got overly enthusiastic, a premature case of victory disease. With this mindset, seeing RU objectives reduced week by week is not enough to have the bias confirmed, and any successes on their part make you feel tipsy. Broad picture disappears and fall of some random village seems like end of the world.
I'm absolutely sticking to the prevalent idea that RU is on a downward spiral to collapse, all available data seems to confirm this. The latest 3rd battalion commitment seems like another gimmick that will just make the fall harder. IMO writing is on the wall, just without precise schedule.

And that would entirely be on us in the West.  If we do crack and fold, well we deserve what happens next and maybe we should not be holding the pen that writes the global order. 
We (the West) are the military industrial complex for the Ukraine - we committed to that pretty early on.  Ukraine has demonstrated that they will fight, we need to demonstrate that we will back them until the job is done. 
I am not sure how potentially losing a tiny berg in the Donbas is somehow shaking everyone's resolve.  I swear the online tone is as jumpy as the prettiest goat at an Afghan barn orgy right now.  "Oh no, we have lost Severdonetsk!  The war is lost!!"  Why? Because the Russians actually managed to get a very costly tactical win?  A win that is unlikely to go anywhere?
The UA is collapsing!!!!  Really?  Where is that coming from?  Based on Russian rates of advance, we in the west have clearly forgotten what an operational collapse actually looks like, which is really weird as we just saw the Russians do one in March.  Ukraine is hurting right now but there is a whole lotta country besides the Donbas and for every day the Russians are burning resources, Ukraine has an opportunity to make more.
We, in the West, are either in this to win it - which includes, at least: continuing to backstop UA force generation, building/funding a Ukraine internal military industrial complex for a long war and re-construction of the country after this is all over.  Hell we did this in spades in Afghanistan...FFS!  And the global stakes are orders of magnitude higher in this war than that "interesting adventure".
Or we get ready to accept that we have pissed away billions, fracture and withdraw support, and live what happens next.
There is no "easy out", or hedge fund strategy here...this is war.  You do not take the Last Argument of Kings option lightly and to steal from Stephen King, we will have forgotten the faces of our fathers if we fail on this one.

We call this "auto-cannibalizations" and it is the last gasp of any professional military.  If this is true and widespread, particularly if they start to pull people out of their training system, then Russia is really throwing it all in an a final gambit.
This war is interesting as this entire last phase has been the Russians figuring out what losing looks like, while Ukraine tries to figure out what winning looks like.

I'd argue that there is also a 100% rational principle at stake here. Continuing the war until Ukraine has regained, at a minimum, all of its pre-Feb 24 territory (preferably all of its pre-2014 territory) may prolong the current war and postpone peace in the short term. But I feel it is important for assuring peace in the long term. Russia cannot be allowed to gain anything from this war, or even be able to credibly claim that it has gained anything. The message not only to Russia, but also to all future potential aggressors, should be aggression does not pay.

I'd argue that there is also a 100% rational principle at stake here. Continuing the war until Ukraine has regained, at a minimum, all of its pre-Feb 24 territory (preferably all of its pre-2014 territory) may prolong the current war and postpone peace in the short term. But I feel it is important for assuring peace in the long term. Russia cannot be allowed to gain anything from this war, or even be able to credibly claim that it has gained anything. The message not only to Russia, but also to all future potential aggressors, should be aggression does not pay.

I'd argue that there is also a 100% rational principle at stake here. Continuing the war until Ukraine has regained, at a minimum, all of its pre-Feb 24 territory (preferably all of its pre-2014 territory) may prolong the current war and postpone peace in the short term. But I feel it is important for assuring peace in the long term. Russia cannot be allowed to gain anything from this war, or even be able to credibly claim that it has gained anything. The message not only to Russia, but also to all future potential aggressors, should be aggression does not pay.

It actually disrupts a larger mobilization to commit the third battalions to Ukraine. They are basically the training infrastructure of the Russian army. The process of reconstituting that from scratch would be enormous, and more importantly SLOW.
It has not, but in the next ~15 years there is a real risk of getting caught on the wrong side of a technological transformation. I not sure big ships are still a thing as missiles and drones get smarter.
The Donbas is important only as long as Ukraine can inflict more damage than it is taking. Keeping the UKR forces as a viable field army and making the Russians bleed is all that matters. The donor conference this week needs to come through.
99% agree, but what does a Donetsk City that absolutely hates them gain Ukraine? They deserve to be part of Russia, worst punishment available.
Yeah, it is going to be a long bloody summer first, at best.
Every single piece of hardware in Europe, and 75% of U.S. capability needs to be on it way to Ukraine, or Taiwan RIGHT NOW. There is not and will not be crisis somewhere else that can't be "contained" for a year two if it comes down to it.

Agreed. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get rid of the Russian menace once and for all. That's why we must send all weapons we can, even if that means we won't have much left to defend ourselves with. In that respect I've changed my mind. 

I can make no sense out of the Russian plan here.  I can make sense out of the Ukrainian one.
If the Russians plan to "breakout at Popasna" then taking Severodonetsk is not a require pre-condition - so why do it?  Taking the far bank positions offers no advantage to an encirclement battle coming from the West.  Further if Russia could do that encirclement, then do it and cut off both Lysychanks and Severodonetsl from supplies and support...now!  
"But could this not be a Russian attritional strategy as well?"  Maybe, but employing attrition as the attacker is kinda upside down, unless you have a massive resource overmatch and can afford the upside down loss equation - and Russia cannot at this point.  Further the Russians are also losing another resource they cannot afford; time.  No, Severodonetsk has the hallmarks of a political vanity piece, which is normally what happens when military logic stops applying.
Ukraine employing an attrition strategy, particularly against Russian artillery and logistics, makes all sorts of sense.  That, and they employed similar strategies in the opening phase of this war, Mariupol in particular.  The UA is not "trapped" by any stretch.  It has plenty of opportunity to withdraw...so they are staying for a good reason.  As to "cutting off Ukrainian defenders" on the far bank of the Siversky Donets; the Ukrainians know that river a lot better than the Russians and they likely know where ford sites and ferry crossings can be establish.  Further the Russians have not demonstrated the acme of ISR integration so I am betting the UA is hedging that they can keep defenders supplied for some time by means other than the bridges.  
This bring up an interesting point that should be underlined: we have asymmetric strategies at play here.  The Russians are focused on terrain gains to demonstrate "victory", while Ukrainian defence has the overall strategic goal of "killing more Russians".  We should keep this in mind - it won't explain every operation, but it appears as the overarching design for each side.