FancyCat

As we see with the lack of general mobilization, clearly Putin has limits to what he can do with Russian society. You are acting like militarily defeating Russia on the field in a decisive battle is the only way of defeating Russia's military. One, let us throw away the idea of reforming Russia or even overthrowing Putin or turning Russia into a democracy. In my opinion, none of that is needed to get Ukraine her pre-2014 borders. Two, as I already mentioned, Putin is waging offensives for political goals, not for military advantages. A key aspect of ensuring Ukraine wins is ensuring that Ukraine has a chance against Russia. That means the defeat of Putin's political goals. Kherson is not merely a town, it is a essential part of Novorossiya which is the legitimization of Russia's control over the land bridge. If Ukraine retakes Kherson, it illustrates to Ukrainians and Russians that Ukraine is intent and able to retake her territories. It thrashes Putin's political legitimation of the land bridge into Russia. It means that Ukraine can threaten and retake Southern Ukraine. It empowers pro-Ukrainian sentiment in occupied regions. It emphasizes to Russian soldiers they are losing. It tells the Russian people in a big, unavoidable, immune to Putin's truth twisting, that the Kremlin has screwed up big time. Others have already spoken of how disadvantaged Russia's military is due to time, I will point out one of Putin's advantages is the crafting of a information control bubble and elevation of himself into a huge reserve of prestige and gravitas. Defeating that gravitas is key to causing internal chaos in Russia. Defeating that prestige is key to further empower Ukraine in dealing with the West.

Extremely good point, I can't see a scenario where Kherson is retaken, and the water supply not threatened for Crimea. It is essential to see that Russia is inflicting major damage on its own armed forces pushing offensives for political purposes, such as the complete conquest of Kherson oblast, a precondition so far for legal annexation into Russia. Same applies to the other contested oblasts. If stalemate was a acceptable goal for Putin to pursue, it plays that he would have stopped offensives and played for much less bleeding of his own troops and pursue diplomatic outreach while bleeding the Ukrainians much worse than presently. That he pushes for these offensives indicates that stalemate is unacceptable for Russia. A scenario where Putin touts the conquest of Kherson and then loses it and must state he has only brought stalemate in return for economic hardships unseen since the 90s? No, no Kherson is not a nibble. If Ukraine can take Kherson, Ukraine has the ability to launch and defeat Russia in pitched battle, as Russia cannot lose Kherson and still claim victory.

Retaking Kherson is by no means a nibble. It is essential for Russia to retain Kherson in order for Putin to give the impression that Russia has gained from starting the war. If Russia does a stalemate, that somehow allows Kherson to fall, Putin will not fare well domestically. Imo, if stalemate was sufficient for Putin to declare victory and walk away, he would have attempted it by now, but he has not.

I stand corrected. If the Gepards are useful than good!

Im not familiar with AA, so the fact they are autocannons does not mean they cannot fend off aircraft? So they can provide the mobile support for a offensive? Even high flying aircraft with stand off weaponry? (I know we are supposing Russia is hoarding it's most technological advanced equipment in case of NATO but maybe NATO provided equipment counts) I can see why NATO may be very reluctant to cross lines with aircraft, Russian gas is extremely important to Europe and if Putin were to cut off gas completely, it would cause a economic crisis in all of Europe. Now yes, Putin gets money, but his bet is that European resolve will waver before Russian resolve and I don't think he's wrong here. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/world/europe/russia-gas-cuts-ukraine-germany.html

Ukraine does not need tanks, they need aircraft. If the informal agreement really is solid and from what I can tell, is part cowardice, part fear Russia will escalate the conflict, tho I doubt militarily, more likely the economic war gets worse. I doubt the U.S or UK will break it. My only option for a NATO member to provide aircraft would be Poland "going rogue" and providing F16s to Ukraine. I hope that Poland is willing to do so. (I don't think if Poland lays down the gauntlet, that other NATO partners can stop it but Poland needs to offer it first, assuming that training isn't already underway (which is quite possible still)

The ability of Russian officers to keep being corrupt and evasive is quite admirable. I wonder if the lies started pre-war, and in order to avoid being persecuted, they must continue the lies on the field? We must be careful about Ukrainian numbers. I saw someone tweet that some of the spouted wounded/Kia numbers didn't make sense. Ukraine has a balancing act to walk, early-war, they needed to demonstrate the ability to survive and wage successful attacks on Russia, now they need to emphasize without further Western aid, they risk causing prolonged conflict, and part of emphasizing the need is illustrating significant damage to Ukrainian forces. Not to say that Ukraine isn't suffering heavily in numbers but independent verification is hard and Ukraine has goals that may prioritize a small fib over the truth. Now I've been saying that it is essential the liberation of Kherson be undertaken as the first objective. Anyone have counters to pursuing that? I know diluting the pincers across the sailent in Donbas is essential, but I think the movement of Caesar artillery here rather than Donbas indicates Ukraine wants Kherson sooner than later. Politically, they need to counter Russian narrative that they are pushing successfully or that stalemate is possible, the loss of Kherson oblast would be a deathblow for that narrative.

Several things to consider, OBrien had brought up in his view, that historians (I think he also included military officers) seemed to have better aligned with the course of the war so far than analysts who specialized in the Russian military, and to me, I was a bit dumbfounded at his tweet, for me the idea of not considering historical performance and broader strokes of history in the view of military performance was just silly. But I'm not a analyst nor even looked into it so I dunno what they learn or use. I think a important part of what has allowed historians to gauge this conflict easier than the analysts is the essential tenet when reviewing source material that it may be wrong or false or biased. (Which I assume analysts would have factored it but guess not?) I love bringing up that the release of the Soviet archives from World War II advanced our perception of the Soviet and German militaries in deep fundamental ways. Western historians, only largely able to access primary sources on the Nazi side, plus cold war egotism, were overestimating the Germany and underestimating the Soviet Union. These analysts should have understood how Russian corruption works yet it never seemingly occurred to them that it would impact their military, despite the 90s disastrous performance. Now General Mark Hertling got stuff right in stating Russia was going to lose, Ukraine was going to hold, but a key aspect of his perspective came from personally working with Russian military. I gotta ask, what have the analysts been eating for 20 years? Just reports from the Russian military to Putin? What happened to human intel? On Ukraine, I guess one cannot fault military focused analysts for being unable to gauge how Ukrainian civil society, a vanguard in the country since at least 2014, would influence the invasion (in one essential sense, maybe the analysts should have realized when Russia was writing out kill lists of Ukrainian civil society, that for Ukraine it was a war of survival and well, a lot of people thought the Soviet Union would just collapse in short order due to Operation Barbarossa no? Look how that turned out) but that just speaks to the need for the involvement of a multi-faceted approach to study of war, instead of focusing on numbers, recognizing social and political structures are essential for understanding conflict. Now someone correct me, but I think historians as a bunch are a bit wired since the swing occurred in the late half of the century to delve deeper beyond military and numbers and see culture and society, etc. Also I've been scratching my head at how Russia looked at the U.S getting its head utterly kicked in the most "fall of Saigon" moment akin to the actual Fall of Saigon in Kabul and figured they would do better seizing a country but upon seeing analysts misjudging Ukraine and Russia after seeing the U.S get routed completely in Afghanistan and then acting surprised as hell that a gun run to Kiev ended in failure, maybe im being too harsh on Russia. Now one defense of analysts I've seen was the fact that Russia didn't follow their doctrine or their manuals, and that just sorta comes as excuses? What the hell is your job for if not to give decision makers in the west predicted paths and outcomes? I mean sure, it was surprising, but at that point, rip up the manual and go back and rewrite it. That analysts could look at a invasion of Ukraine occurring full-scale and being prepped and say "nah" and then have it occur is simply a failure. It doesn't matter if Putin suddenly went cuckoo, you should have been able to recognize the prep taking place all along the border, the signals coming from the Kremlin speeches and we still had analysts saying the U.S was incorrect and then look idiotic. And then the gun run to Kiev happened and analysts looked like fools as basically the invasion failed in the north. What's the point of having analysts when they can't predict anything well? So yeah, the Russians threw out their manual for Ukraine but instead of throwing your hands in the air, figure out why Russia thinks Ukraine is a cakewalk? Instead of a analysis of why Russian leadership thought that Ukraine was gonna roll over dead (I'm leaning towards racism and Russian superiority complex) we get analysts making mealy mouthed warnings about the worse to come. Where's the analysis on why the worst hasn't come? If the decision to invade Ukraine in the manner it did, came down to "political, cultural, social" aspects influencing the military decision, then clearly the failure of insight into Russian military decision making is at least partly due to focusing on military numbers and not social, cultural, political aspects and instead of stubbornly saying it's out of our wheelhouse, analysts should probably ask why a wargaming forum gave better analysis. (Maybe the U.S failure in Afghanistan comes down to the same sort of failure in predicting Russia?) Now, U.S Intelligence Community, seems to have gotten Russia's capability completely misjudged so one cannot be mean to analysts too much but only one or two members got Ukraine's resistance down pat. State Dept's INR. According to CNN, it made it predictions based on public opinion polling on Ukrainians in the months leading up to the invasion. On one hand, sounds pretty mundane, but if it was so mundane, why was INR the only one to predict Ukraine would hold out longer? I will say Afghanistan makes it clear why Russia has failed in Ukraine. The inability for the U.S to win or even stalemate the conflict in Afghanistan, I think illustrates well how Russia is currently shoving it's hand into a alligator mouth right now. In the same sense we know there are Russians analyzing and warning of the impending failure occurring in Ukraine, we long had warnings of the same relayed about Afghanistan and yet a complete inability to change paths or effect a outcome to change, what is well, is pretty much complete defeat I think is pretty good contrast to Russia's lack of making decisions to at least change the course of the conflict from its utter defeat in Ukraine. (obviously both scenarios have factors explaining why changing course is problematic but my point is to emphasize that Russia may be ****ing up hard in Ukraine but the U.S literally had the same happen not long ago. This is not unique to Russia in the modern age, and I'll just say that if we can **** up that badly, than there isn't any reason Russia will not lose this war.) Of course maybe that isn't gonna happen and Russia gets to a stalemate. But we will see. https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/13/politics/us-intelligence-review-ukraine/index.html

Tbh it’s just a flag being waved, I hope her village recognizes her regret and isnt too harsh on her. Tho I saw Ukraine has been investigating pro-Russian social media postings by Ukrainians. On one hand, on the other, you do need to ensure they aren’t stirring the pot. War always make these questions impossible to answer vs in peace. I believe the soldier who stomped on the flag in the video wished that she won’t be too socially punished for her actions. Also, apparently they made up in a sort of way after the incident, but the video spread out anyway. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/05/16/maybe-the-lord-himself-sent-me

Goddamn I did not realize Ukraine was asking for essentially the entire artillery of the U.S x2.

Tbh aside from the physical elimination part for administrators in occupied regions, which I doubt will occur, not sure anything else Haiduk said is sinister. Of course collaboration needs to be punished (Ukraine abolished death penalty anyway no?), it’s war, full scale war unseen since the Balkans for Europeans, increasingly shown as a war of imperial conquest and erasure of Ukrainian identity. Why are you surprised at Haiduk and others anger? As for Crimea, those Baltic restrictions, don’t they have terms for non-citizens to gain citizenship? Those terms according to wiki are quite fine to me. I am not sure why you think some form of collective guilt is bad. It is important for society to have self-reflection and collective responsibility (Germany a prime example). Putin may have ordered the war, but Russia as a whole goes along with it, a war that has shocked European consciousness unlike anything since the Balkan wars or even 1945 as far back. A war seen as unthinkable, for the simple idea that many in the West believed Russia and Ukraine were “brotherly nations” yet somehow Putin was able to get Russia to launch a full scale attempt to seize all of Ukraine and annex it wholly, with the idea of erasing Ukraine as a nation and forcing Ukrainians into a Russian identity, well certainly Putin didn’t make it so that this could occur on his own. Foreign Minister Lavrov stated that Russia had a right to assert to militarily intervene to assert the Russian language be allowed in Ukraine by stating what the UK would do in response to Ireland banning English, or Belgium banning French, Except that is a pile of horse****, in this modern time, no European nation would invade another over language rights! That Lavrov chose to mention Ireland is astoundingly on the nose considering Ireland tossed the British imperial chokehold on their country and certainly if you asked the Irish or anyone in Europe if Ireland had the right to tell Britain to go **** itself before breakfast and after dinner everyday, the answer would have been a resounding affirmation for Ireland doing so, so why does Russia feel like it can tell Ukraine what to do, and why does Russia think inflicting a full scale war is a valid justification of Ukraine banning Russian? (Which it didn’t do anyhow) it would be like Britain attempting to reconquer Ireland over Ireland mandating Gaelic, a absolutely ridiculous notion to consider Britain having the right to do so, and would be rightly considered a British attempt at regaining her lost imperial status over Ireland and yet Lavrov is I dunno, stupid, or just unaware, or horridly too aware of how stupid and outdated the reasoning sounds.

Most of the Russian elite including those ridiculous tv personalities railing against the West have assets, homes, citizenships in the West so its funny as hell to hear them lambast the West even as they fight to retain their assets, homes and access to the West privately.

Didn't we see EW units moving out during the initial stages of the invasion? I wonder if the length and extent of the frontlines made it harder for EW to occur during this maneuver stage vs now. Can't they use pontoon bridges? On that note, does Ukraine have any ability for crossing rivers? If not, wouldn't it be more likely it would be harder for Ukraine to do a offensive than Russia to do a offensive across rivers?

Thank you for correcting me. So he lost his business? What happened to him since then?

Not only are people who are pro-ukrainian basically pushed out, It is long standing policy to russify a region, or to "get rid of" uncooperative elements in the regions Russia wants and import friendlier replacements. The Crimean Tatars are a prime example, they got eradicated from Crimea in the middle of the war! Their population has since been never able to reach the percentage of the Crimean population since then. So obviously there will be fearful civilians in Donbas, Crimea and the occupied regions who dread the return of Ukraine, everyone who remained who is pro-Ukrainian either managed to lay low or got "filtered" and we know from what happened in the previously occupied regions of Ukraine what happens to those getting filtered, (and that **** started after merely a few days and weeks of occupation!! Imagine the suffering in the longer held regions!) and certainly the mass graves in Kherson do not bring good hope. Basically, don't talk about the security and well-being of civilians when Ukraine retakes the territory without acknowledging the ethnic cleansing going on under Russian control. Russia will and is relying on ignorance of it's actions in the occupied regions of Ukraine to assert that Ukraine will be undertaking hostile and unbecoming actions towards civilians and that instances of return of Ukrainian sovereignty will result in repression and therefore Russia has justification for holding on to "pro-Russian" territory in Ukraine and in the event of the war turning, the West should seek a ceasefire rather risk a hostile Ukraine extracting vengeance on these pro-Russian Ukrainians. (Things like the bombing of civilian areas in Donesk, allegedly by Ukraine we saw recently, those are not merely to accuse Ukraine of warcrimes, but to assert that the West risks putting innocent civilians under repression and death should Ukraine retake the occupied regions)

Also the idea that Donbas or Crimea is inherently pro-Russian is ignorant of the displaced internal movements of Ukrainians in response to Russia's seizure of the areas. Of course only the pro-Russian population remains inside Russian controlled areas, the pro-ukrainian population fled in response to repression and violence! The same applies to Crimea. Asking for consideration of the people living in the occupied regions is just ignoring the many people who left the occupied regions. edit: look at this response , as i am being overly broad and incorrect regarding the situation in Donbas and Crimea.

The longer you wait to retake territory, the harder it is to justify it. Ukraine, assuming it can retake her pre-invasion borders, would be foolish to not move further and attempt to take back Crimea and Donbas. Ukraine has moral legitimacy, Ukraine has the backing of the West, this opportunity to settle and regain her borders without Russia seriously penalizing in response will not come again (what more could Russia do now that it has not already done?) As Haiduk put it, the west will eventually decide to equalize the relationship with Russia. Best to retake it now while the West is forced to side with Ukraine. And again, Crimea will remain a dire threat to preventing Ukrainian ports from operating, (not to mention flood Southern Ukraine in a invasion) more so than if Crimea is retaken. While yes, Ukraine can threaten Russia, I think it's best to assume Ukraine will always be disadvantaged vs Russia if nothing else due to risk of nuclear escalation on Russia's part so better to do this now than later.

How much do you suppose the focus on airpower in the west has impacted artillery, particularly in the realm of material being supplied to Ukraine? On that note, do we have any numbers for Russian artillery? At all? I know 10,000 tanks were thrown around, but what about artillery?

Assuming this isn't another instance of Ukraine just no to their visit soon, would mean more weapons and equipment for Ukraine is about to be pledged.

That's a take. I doubt if you asked the Irish if they enjoyed the famines, the answer would be positive. India, I'm sure their famines and deindustrialization aren't taken as a positive. I could go on, but that's some silly stuff, imperial conquest is good, jeez.

Mind you Erdogan is facing a election and he's completely ****ed the economy, this is probably a nationalistic ploy to win votes. While he's veered towards authoritarianism, turkey is still a democracy and he is on the chopping block.

Via Phillip O'Brien, the Ministry of Defense has issued a update regarding foreign assistance to Ukraine. Lots of interesting tidbits, but I'll highlight this:

You know, had the invasion not occurred, i would have largely agreed with you, but....since the invasion has occurred, and suddenly everyone in Europe (aside from the Balkans), must confront the idea of war and military conflict once more, with EE feeling pensive about the faithfulness of its Western European allies, NATO serves to defend Europe, and especially Eastern Europe. For all the idea of Russia suffering massive damage in Ukraine, lets not underscore the fact Ukraine has been severely damaged. No state in EE wants to suffer any of that, and NATO remains the best guarantee at warding off Russian threats. The damage Russia is inflicting on a nation of 44 million people, with hundreds of millions suffering side effects from the economic damage of the food conflict does not endorse your viewpoint.