billbindc

I have some sympathy for the latter perspective but it's very early days yet. A "victory" announcement by Putin has short term benefits in the Russian political sphere but the truth is that sanctions aren't going away and the Russian economy is not even close to as bad as it's going to be in six months. Additionally, the EU/US are not going to suddenly stop supporting Ukraine militarily and Ukraine isn't going to accept whatever lines Putin decides on. The fighting will continue regardless of whatever fiat he attempts to invoke. In short, this is going to be a frozen conflict that works against the regime in Moscow rather than for it. Moscow's original calculation was in part that it needed to get control of Ukraine before Ukraine was militarily too powerful to dominate. That ship looks like it has now definitively sailed. Another major objective was to reconstitute the Soviet sphere, at least in part, so that domination of the near abroad would be assured. Given where Finland/Sweden and the EU are now going, quite the opposite has happened. Putin can say whatever he wants to but the reality of all of this will be all too clear to anyone who cares to notice and the braying fools on Russian state TV aren't going to change that.

No. This was a long planned test and despite the Kremlin's limp sabre rattling, they informed the US well ahead.

This, times a billion.

I think here was a general perception that Russian successes* in the 'near abroad', in Syria, in interventions in Africa were proof of some larger level of excellence. It should also be noted that there are plenty of folks in the Defense establishment, on the Hill and elsewhere with lots of money riding on an overestimation of Russian capability. It creates groupthink and it's hard for many to completely resist.

I know those hills in Northern Vietnam. Always take the redline option there. Seriously. We are talking about very well informed and sharp folks and you see them out there from time to time. Their bias is that they have perforce spent years working the Kremlin, the oligarchs, the FSB. Clearly in this instance all three of those verticals were themselves completely wrong about what was happening with the Russian Army and very few really knew clearly what was happening around Putin. Yet those groups were often the best sources last year and the year before. It's going to take time for habits of reporting to adjust.

One big caveat to this is in the DC media. You would be surprised at how firmly some of the best informed are stuck on the idea that Vladi has a big, rapey, rabbit to pull out of his military hat.

What to send and when is a pretty complex question and goes way beyond defensive/offensive, logistical challenges, training, etc. For instance, some systems that don't feel at all like a red line item while Moscow still thinks it can win are going to look quite differently to the Kremlin when/if it's clear it's about to lose. Other systems are pretty obviously not going to be delivered but act as demonstrations signaling restraint by the West to both Russia and China. For that matter, the way China delivered Serbia weapons recently was almost certainly a messaging exercise in addition to the early fulfillment of a contract and that message wasn't just to the EU/US in the light of the fact that there's no evidence yet of military aid from Beijing to Moscow. Was it the Capt that said "war is communication" somewhere above? Well, there's a lot of that going on right now and so far it has pretty successfully kept the war from spreading further.

Ok, that's the plan. What's their ability to carry all of that out?

It begins.

Read this as an expectation from the White House and Pentagon that we will be dealing with the Ukrainian military for a long time to come.

What's interesting to note is that the publicly announced US intelligence assessments weren't a one time thing. They were copious, changed over time and were updated. They also were issued pretty frequently. That's *not* the kind of product you have if you are working off of a few highly placed sources (if you want them to live through the next week). Bottom line, the US was demonstrating that we had thoroughly penetrated the Russian decision cycle in every way possible. A similar thing happened a week or so ago when the NSA simply disconnected the GRU hacking team from a broad swathe of software they were about to use for a larger cyber attack. There's a purpose to all of this, of course. It's a demonstration of dominance and so a method by which one nation can coerce another from escalation. Putin has to consider not just the down stream effects of (for example) a strike on a Polish arms depot or a limited nuclear strike...he now has to think about what happens between when he orders it and when it can actually be carried out. He has to assume that we know pretty much as soon as he decides. It cannot be a comfortable position.

If there's a quibble to have with this, it's that the cultivation of fake sources, treating random contacts as producing agents, pocketing funding, concocting progress in unfriendly political environments, telling frightening bosses in Moscow pretty much whatever they want to hear was absolutely rampant in the KGB when Putin was an agent in Germany in the 1980's. As Masha Gessen puts it about one of Putin's tours: "Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the mountains of useless information produced by the KGB". Vladi had to know that on a variety of levels, he was being fed what he wanted to hear. In addition, the FSB wouldn't need 150 FSB agents to finance friendly militants in Ukraine. So...maybe plausible but it's putting far too much on one factor to say Russia failed because of this issue.

I'm a liberal Dem and I endorse this statement! I should also make it clear that I like to point out to folks from time to time that the GHW Bush administration did an absolutely stellar job at handling the end of the Cold War and the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe. Love or hate an administration politically as you will but it's important to not let it get in the way of analytical thinking. Bravo. Also, if you guys want to know what's up with the FSB, Soldatov is your man:

Yeah. The word I'm hearing is "no more ****ing off ramps".

The most decisive phase in this war is likely to come in the next few weeks/months. Even if, by a miracle of industrial engineering and production, Russia got this chips in a month or two they'd still need months at minimum to produce a significant amount of weapons with them. Meanwhile, Ukraine arms up daily with via pre-existing Western stockpiles. Simply put, even with a deus ex machina, Russia has to fight with what it brung.

Every indicator I can see indicates that Russia's planning was for a short war. There's nor reason to suspect they stockpiled chips.

Note: chips are not a fungible cross platform technology. Russian military hardware has very particular needs and those needs are often in areas where China itself is currently feeling the pinch. There's also little appetite in Chinese industrial sectors to risk 70% of their business for 5% of their business in Russia. Notably, Sinopec is privately giving every signal of not renewing Russian oil/gas contracts as they expire. Russia needs China vastly more than China needs Russia and China puts a lot at risk for a paltry reward. Broadly speaking, Xi doesn't want Russia to lose but he's no Kaiser Wilhelm. He's not going to take serious risks for his Austro-Hungarian style ally.

In assessing the threat of escalation, speed matters. The hesitation over sending the MiG's was a demonstration to the Russians by the US that there were limits to what we would do and that we would think before we acted. That's very valuable if you want your less-than-stable opponent to not overreact to what you actually do. It also creates a sense of what is and is not the kind of thing that they can do themselves. Remember, China does a lot more trade with the West than they do with Russia but Russia now cannot live without China. The demonstration above (inter alia) provides frameworks China can use to restrain Russian reactions from spiraling completely out of control.

Imaginative tactics, morale and aggression are going a long, long way in this war.

OCCRP with the goods: https://www.occrp.org/en/

Jomini has some thoughts tonight:

In reality, it's probably both incompetence and pretty deep penetration.

It's going to be everywhere.

Forgot to add:

This. The crucial geopolitical fact that the Russian invasion of Ukraine accomplished was to convince Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, etc that Russia is a problem that cannot be handled through accommodation. More to the point, in places like Germany, it's popular to advocate for more direct confrontation with Putin. Leaders will get pilloried (as Scholtz is) for not taking a firm stance and parties will lose voters if they mishandle the conflict in the long term. The EU/NATO may not always act as quickly or as adeptly as many wish but this is not a job that most nations' leadership think can be left half done.