billbindc

This would seem to be an odd move. Russia simply cannot afford to give up any more territory if it plans on holding on to anything north of the Crimean peninsula or west of Mariupol.

Is that the "winds of change" chap? Meh. Plausibly written with an eye towards what people in the west want to believe. Grozev or not, I doubt the provenance, the intent or the usefulness.

Theiner's thread is an interesting take. Personally, I'll wait until expert opinion (vs the NY Times showing a picture to some rando epidemiologist somewhere) weighs in.

I think we are a *very* long way away from a no fly zone at this point. The first rule of managing escalation is to maintain proportionality. A no fly zone is not proportional in any way with a couple of errant missiles and it would be an excellent way to create splits in support for Ukraine. I know that's an unsatisfying conclusion on a lot of levels but the reality is that, especially with Ukraine appearing to be steadily winning, nobody wants to induce a reduction in support for Kyiv or an uncontrolled spiral out of control with Moscow.

This. Poland will likely invoke Article 4, NATO will investigate and we'll go from there. Even if this does turn out to be errant Russian missiles, there isn't going to be an Article 5 declared. There will be a somewhat disproportionate response that will likely not be obvious or emotionally satisfying which underlines NATO's preponderance of force and that's it.

US officials are confirming it was a Russian missile. They specified two actually.

The idea that Putin’s nuclear threats ‘seem to be working’ would be a surprise to the Russians at this point. I’d put RealClearDefense into the same bucket RealClearPolitics goes in: a conservative but formerly respectable outlet that has clearly decided to choose advocacy and politics over data.

If I were the sort of army that had been planning a push south from Zaporizhizhia, husbanding my resources while corroding the Russians West of the Dnieper, it would be entirely in keeping with that strategy to force Russia to take defending the entire line of the river seriously. Personally, I'm not that sort of army. But you may know of one.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/10/russia-putin-ukraine-un-united-nations/ China now asserting, sotto voce, that it was not informed about the invasion of Ukraine. That's complete bull**** but important none the less. Moscow's isolation continues to deepen and it's not just on that level. Russia is being sidelined in pretty much every diplomatic venue globally. Putin has achieved the opposite of his dream of greater Russian influence. PS: Forgot to add that Xi publicly stated with Biden that nuclear weapons should never be used *including in Ukraine*. Russia's diplomatic ship has sailed.

Vad at the beginning of the war: "Putin will win this war because the Russian armed forces are modern, well-equipped, because they also have multiple superiorities, because they have a strategic base against which one simply cannot defend oneself." Complete clown.

This. As the Capt and others have pointed out, wars are communication. The message here is that Russia is losing, Russia is retreating and that Russia will negotiate an exit strategy from a position of weakness.

The line of the Dnieper creates some interesting opportunities as it's obvious that the Russian military is not going to recross. A drive down the east side of the river assisted by artillery and the occasional flanking operation from the west seems like a fruitful set of opportunities.

https://www.thebulwark.com/the-liberation-of-kherson/ A big outcome of the US elections is that the candidates pushing hardest to reduce aid to Ukraine last pretty badly. For you non-US folks, the out party tends to crush in the mid terms. This time, it didn't. Really good news.

Worth pondering if you still think that a nose to nose offensive was a better option than fog melting snow.

In the bigger picture of global opinion, diplomacy, morale and aid this is a much bigger victory than a vicious street battle in a festung Kherson. That's *especially* true if it turns out that Russia negotiated giving up territory with the Ukrainian government.

As did the French. It's a lamentable fact the French fought pretty hard in a losing fight only to have that forgotten soon after.

Clearly someone's been reading this thread...

From what is out there already, I'd be less worried about some sort of Stalingrad occurring. First of all, Ukraine does not have any pressing need to take the city immediately. It can wait. Second, it seems at the moment that this is less a retreat now than the entire salient coming unstuck.

It should be clear that Russia can only end this war on favorable terms if it either can militarily compel Ukraine to favorable terms or if it has something Ukraine needs badly enough in exchange for same. Under neither one of these scenarios is a retreat from Kherson remotely a positive thing for the Kremlin. It puts them farther away from either of the conditions above, it stimulates Ukrainian morale, it hurts Russian morale and it shows Ukraine's backers that their aid is working. I'm sure the Kremlin will spin it and the usual suspects will swallow that spin...but the likes of Glenn Greenwald don't win your wars for you.

A police action versus Javelin armed opponents is a whole other thing.

Remember those parade uniforms discovered in charred BMP's? It seems pretty clear that the MOD thought the FSB had it wired.

Feels like this needs a big revision.

“For the sake of the nation’s life, it was necessary to restore the army’s will to die.” Alexander Kerensky on the Spring 1917 Offensive

Russia's remaining hopes lie, as they have since approximately May, in a collapse of Western support for Ukraine. That support will certainly be pressured over time but it is hard to imagine a scenario at this point where even limited support doesn't allow Ukraine to at minimum maintain the status quo. The other shoe that has so far stubbornly failed to entirely drop is a collapse in the domestic Russian economy. The dangers in going against Putin are acute and any would be coup planners will want to know that a wave of popular support will overwhelm the dead enders. So Russia will lurch forward for a while yet, I think.

The reaction to this has been...odd. The Quincy folks and some of the Congress members who signed that dumb letter are pointing at this news and taking credit for it. They've left unexplained how their announcement traveled back in time to force the White House to do something months ago. The all or nothing people are crying foul and think that this is a betrayal of the Ukrainian government. Neither take makes any sense at all. What the administration is doing in a very real way lowers the possibility of unchecked escalation and/or the Russian use of nukes in this war. It also allows the delivery of very clear messages directly to and from Russian leadership. All of that is *very good*. This is what competence looks like. Enjoy it while we have it!