billbindc

Seeing reports Russians are retreating from Hostomel and Bucha. True?

Cheryl Rofer is an arms control expert and physicist. She's poured some cold water on the idea that this is a serious issue.

It's important to add to this that the overt US position is that no deal is worth signing if Ukraine hasn't agreed to all points therein. Two things are happening there: 1 - The US agrees with the Ukrainian position that anything short of a definitive end to the war just means another war later. 2 - The US thinks FR and GR are still far too ready to make that kind of deal and so have to be boxed in. Hence the declaration that Putin is a war criminal, etc. The policy is in essence "No more half measures".

Same!

A couple of things: 1. Bret Stephens doesn't know anything at all about Russia. Zero. 2. It's *very* early. The effects on the Russia economy have just begun, the war is still ongoing. 3. Every war he fought before ended in victory. Not this one. 4. Every war he fought before didn't turn Russia into a pariah state. This one has and will. 5. It's very clear that there are strong divisions between the FSB/MOD/SVR/Presidential office that this war broke open. 6. Cargo 200 has just begun. I could go on and on but you get the point. Stephens is a hack and you're better off ignoring him.

I would pretty emphatically trust a map from the Jamestown folks.

No. I'd suspect something more along the lines of having an opportunity to clean out a long standing annoyance that was politically unpalatable BU (before Ukraine). I deeply doubt that any of those png'd folks were unmarked throughout their tenure.

I'm not convinced that Russian forces are getting their heads out of the noose. They are taking a gamble that they can hold on enough in the north that Ukraine cannot significantly reinforce the south. Given how little we know about UA reserves...and I suspect they know less...I'm not sure that it's a smart gamble to take.

I'd suspect it's mostly about securing a victory *somewhere* so intended to reinforce/maintain what's happened in the south in the hope that the north doesn't collapse enough/quickly enough to allow Ukraine to reinforce the drive on Kherson, etc. They know what Ukraine can do on defense, now they are betting it can't repeat the trick on offense.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/28/the-drone-operators-who-halted-the-russian-armoured-vehicles-heading-for-kyiv If even half of this is true...

Horowitz quite useful on this development. Personally, I think that this is about giving up territory for political gain now rather than lose it forcefully (with all of the political damage that would entail) later.

Kofman has been wrong in some pretty significant ways so far.

Has there been an attempt at damaging the Kerch Bridge yet?

Classifying that statement as an intentional gaffe at this point.

If Bellingcat's reporting it, it happened. The WSJ article says they believe it was "hardliners" in Moscow trying to throw off the talks. Absolute nonsense. Russian policy is top to bottom frightfulness to coerce and this is of a piece. The only real lesson here is that the oligarchs, up to and including the most powerful, are expendable.

Couldn't tell you how many conversations I had just before it all kicked off with DC folks who said "But it makes *zero* rational sense for Putin to do it!". My particular bias was to look at the capabilities he was stacking up that were way beyond what was needed for pressure but would be required for compellence. This time, unfortunately my bias turned out to be right. Your "reasonable" analysis had a lot of company.

That bit gets a bit complicated. Those jokers don't possess any real power themselves and yet they are saying things that certainly wouldn't be what Putin would prefer. They are doing the running for others who actually do have a power base. I think what they are saying is almost irrelevant to the fact that they can say anything at all. Put another way, an endgame involving a blazing nationalist pushing Putin aside and then signing a treaty with Ukraine wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Cracks widening a bit.

Three key things: 1. Biden is the first American President who came into office with zero illusions about Putin/Russia. 2. The people Biden appointed watched 20 years of mistakes, magical thinking and missed chances. 3. More broadly across the foreign policy establishment there was bipartisan support to take on the task. Putin was entirely unprepared for what the meant in terms of applied full spectrum American power.

The imagination and attention to detail suggest lots of this was planned well ahead: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/fbi-trolls-russian-embassy-with-geotargeted-ads-for-disgruntled-spies/

Very definitely. That logistical wave didn't magically come into being on February 24th. Folks too often forget that the CIA started as and remains to a large extent a paramilitary organization and that portion of the CIA has been working very hard with the Ukrainians since 2014. Even if Putin's political plans had worked, there was a very large resistance movement in the works. In practice, those plans simply had to be altered somewhat to fit the Ukrainian army successfully remaining in the field and an unlooked for flood of EU support. Of interest: https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-secret-cia-training-program-in-ukraine-helped-kyiv-prepare-for-russian-invasion-090052743.html

I agree with all of this. The delta in the situation is that the US admin had done tons and tons of 'what if the Ukrainians hold out' diplomatic and logistical legwork. Once the Russians invaded, the EU governments had already been prepped for the worst case scenario and had already agreed to many of the actions they later took. In fact, DC did such a good job that by the second week EU countries were going beyond what had been asked for. The big question now is holding them to course. You can see the 'war criminal', 'must lose power' etc comments in that light. The White House is locking them into position (as in, it's hard to drop sanctions on someone your government has agreed is a war criminal).

This provides a lot more context to the then controversial steps Zelensky took to secure the political space: https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-zelenskiy-bans-three-opposition-tv-stations/a-56438505 If we remember how clearly the US IC was anticipating Russian military moves, it's now become obvious that it was doing the same on the political side and was advising Zelensky accordingly. There was lots of kvetching about it among the usual suspects in DC who were outside of the magic circle of briefings.

Sure. And as someone pointed out earlier, China has Japan's WWII problem...their fuel travels through a narrow and vulnerable carotid and those nations that have the strength to cut it have evinced an alarmingly powerful demonstration of unity and their willingness to take that kind of action. The PRC's plan for Taiwan was to create an unprecedented and/or complicated situation that would freeze the liberal democracies. Russia just gave those democracies a practice run and a so far quite successful one. Xi will perforce have to pause for quite a while and think through the implications.