billbindc

I'm not a believer in the "Putin's crazy, he'll start throwing nukes" thesis but I do think you can expect at minimum everything he's done in Syria to be tried out in Ukraine. Claiming a bio/chem/nuke atrocity by Ukraine is not escalatory in any real sense and I think he thinks that the pressure it would create in NATO might fracture some of the unity he's facing. He knows he's on the hook on this one so while he's not suicidal for himself or Russia, the likeliest outcome is that he finds something that can justify this debacle even if only for domestic consumption.

An economist of my acquaintance described it as the economic equivalent of going from Texas to Tennessee in under six months. When all is said and done, the costs may be much closer to your percentages than seemed possible two weeks ago.

https://twitter.com/Blue_Sauron/status/1501459371791892481?s=20&t=T10Hrg4CMK9gnaSIludJCg Indeed.

A question: how much is abandonment of tanks driven by the lethality of Javelins, etc. In other words, how much is low morale and how much is a rational reaction to vulnerability?

Flying fighter jets from a NATO country into a combatant is exactly the kind of thing Putin wants to justify the war as a fight against a NATO incursion. It also is quite escalatory. We’ve already escalated a ton. We have to demonstrate to the Russians and to everyone else that there are limits to what we will do. That makes Russian escalation harder and lowers the chances this gets out of hand. People have to get their Cold War game faces on. That’s how you fight without everyone dying immolated in a nuclear explosion. I understand and sympathize with the immediate desire to end this as fast as possible but the MiG's are mostly symbolic at this point. They won't actually end things faster and quite possibly make things worse. Ye

Well aware of that history. But that was dragging bombers into a non-combat theater. Very different.

Sorry...weird double post. Just an fyi, those Polish MiG's are very likely not going to Ukraine. The thorniest issue is that they'd be flying from a non-combatant NATO country into contested airspace and Defense and the intelligence community clearly think they are escalatory. In addition, it doesn't seem like the most militarily efficient idea to take the Ukrainian air force from down 10 to 1 to only down 8 to 1. There are less destabilizing and far more useful arms transfers that work on Russia's weaknesses instead of Russia's (at least potential) strengths. This was a hot potato that nobody wanted. The Poles just tossed it into our lap.

Hey John, feel free to delete!

Well…it looks like maybe we know why Russia hasn’t blinked out the cell networks in Ukraine:

To be fair, this was the rational take and so the most prominent one among the people I spoke to up until a couple of weeks ago. And those that had contacts in Russia had plenty of reason to feel affirmed given that almost nobody in Russia really knew or expected it to happen either.

What event, marker, trend are you looking for that tells you the Russian Army is no longer fit to achieve minimal goals set by Putin and will start losing what little it has already achieved?

Starting to see train flatbeds full of a random mix of civilian vehicles with “V” daubed on them heading West in Russia. Also, Israel clearly acting as some sort of go between.

Been following the OSINT account that only counts verified Russian losses. Those look to be about 100 vehicles a day with about 40% being tanks/afv/ifv. My question: how long would you expect the Russian military to be able to sustain those losses and still operate (in)effectively?

"Well, my commander told me that Nazis had taken over the government and our fraternal brothers in the Russkiy Mir will greet us with flowers and..." <BOOM>

This seems quite compelling to me: https://samf.substack.com/p/space-and-time?s=w&utm_medium=email

Heard from a friend about this who is an expert in IP and related. He pointed out that this is as effective a cyber attack in the medium term as most countries could mount and will take a serious toll on Russia in many obvious and less obvious ways. He seemed a bit awed talking about it.

Significant: https://www.agents.media/rossijskie-vlasti-sanktsii/

Julia Ioffe reporting today that her Russian friends are all racing to the Baltics border bc there are no plane tickets. A friend said to stop texting her until she was out bc they are searching phone for 'anti-regime' material (and then denying exit). The friend was frantically cleaning out her phone cache.

There is an excellent response to this thread that explains they they aren't even the correct tires for these vehicles but instead cheap Chinese knockoffs. So, bad maintenance *and* ****ty procurement.

As I understand it, it's pretty much presumed at this point that Putin will eventually demand attacks on the West because he sees the sanctions effects (i.e. Google Pay and Apple Pay no longer working on the Moscow metro) as essentially the same thing. But...the US can respond in a profoundly big way and that's got to be giving the Kremlin pause. In addition, NATO has clearly stated that a cyber attack on any one NATO country triggers Article 5. So I'd expect some nibbling around the edges but no major swings for the fences yet.

China at this point is overtly being sympathetic to everyone but quietly would prefer this were over with a cleanish Russian victory. One tactical nuke and I think China backs away into armed neutrality toward Putin.

This to me is a huge point. Between Ukrainians inherent attitude, the UA's grit on the field and Russian mistakes Putin has got them thinking they can win outright. That's a huge blunder. The whole point of the decapitation wave was to forestall that. Worse, Putin has made the EU think the Ukrainians can win outright. If the EU didn't think so, if the EU wasn't quite literally inspired by Ukrainian resistance those arms transfers simply wouldn't be happening. There were a lot of factors in this, not least that the US admin did a great job of anticipating Russian actions, pre-organizing responses and priming EU countries but Russia wrongfooted itself from the beginning in really dire ways.

They still have to be fed and resupplied. The smaller cities may not be a good harbinger for the big ones. Expect Putin to want to close this out in a month at most. Sly didn't work. Next frightfulness. Then, he's in an insurgency...with a running down army, sanctions and internal pressures. It's going to be nasty but I'm not sure I'd want to be him given the options.

Gentlemen, Alperovich is quite good and I think has the future mapped out pretty well: https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1498772954938757121?s=20&t=1cS3z5ZxgXSLO529zLFyqw

My favorite Matt Gallagher line (author of "Kaboom!" inter alia): "Lieutenant Colonels...what are they for?"