How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[BeondTheGrave]

I have been a way a bit today, just coming back. Seems like today was a more quiet day? 

[sburke]

4 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

The crowd skewed older, 20-22,

Man that hurts,,,,

[BeondTheGrave]

1 minute ago, sburke said:

Man that hurts,,,,

Since 2020 incoming freshmen have all been born after 9/11. That one was a real dick kick. Sometimes in class I've even had 17 yr olds.

[sburke]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Damn, you're right.  I keep feeding people who push Kremlin talking points.  But it is soooooooooo easy to trash them with facts, I have trouble resisting.

Plus, what else am I supposed to do with all this knowledge?  I can tell you one thing, my wife doesn't have much patience for it. "OK, that was interesting.  But can we please get to making dinner now?"

Steve

I was doing my best to have him NOT get your attention.  I clearly need to work harder at that.  So what's for dinner?  Poultine?

[Zveroboy1]

Latest wiki map :

Mariupol appears to be encircled and the situation for the Ukrainian forces north of Luhansk looks precarious. The Russian rate of advance seems rather sluggish but I have come to realize that these maps probably lag 12 hours or even a full day behind the current situation which of course should be expected.

In Kyiv it feels like the Russians are going for a wider envelopment, probably because they were encountering too much resistance on the main axis. I don't believe for a second that they are seriously considering a push towards Lviv. This sounds completely unrealistic. I wonder if the small west most thrust in the north in the direction of Zhytomyr could be the Belarus forces.

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, BeondTheGrave said:

We maybe see 1% of whats really going on.

All good points it is very hard to determine what is actually happening on the ground at a tactical or operational level.  What is odd is what we are seeing, if not totally fabricated, and more importantly what we are not seeing.  These are snippets but also remember that a military machine is a big system.  I do not need to see the inner workings of my entire car engine to know that the weird knocking sound or strange smell is not a good sign.

Even as one-offs things like:

- destroyed high level low density assets such as AD, engineering and logistics.

- obvious logistical issues such as vehicles out of gas.

- C2 and morale issues, such as abandoned vehicles and odd PW stories.

- Ukrainian alleged airstrikes/drone strikes 48 hours into this thing when air superiority is kinda invasion 101.

- The beginnings of insurgency actions

- The fact that we are going into day 6 and there is nowhere near enough red on those maps unless one is looking for a very long drawn out slog.

- We are not seeing large Ukrainian PW captures that indicate whole units or formations are surrendering

- We are not seeing Ukrainian cities declare themselves as "open" or regions of the country effectively surrendering.

- We are not seeing a communications or internet blackout over the Ukraine.

- We are not seeing Ukrainian units splitting off or switching sides.

- We are not seeing an outpouring of support for Putin back in Russia

None of those "not seen" make much sense for Russia to hold back on at this point.

I am not sure how the academics in your lecture think a military intelligence picture is built up but it is pretty much by stringing together a lot of information like this (a lot more) into a coherent picture.  Now any one of these insolation is likely a weird tactical event or unlucky day.  When one sees these things repeatedly, patterns start to emerge that give a sense of how things are proceeding.  And by every professional assessment I have heard the answer is "not well" for Russia at day 6, not well at all.  Further, strategically the Russians could be in real trouble as their options spaces are compressing at an increasing rate, which is not supposed to happen if one has the initiative. 

[re-post from the Beta Forum below]

It is pretty obvious the Russian offensive has stalled but is likely regrouping and retooling.  The problem for them now is 1) Ukrainians have had time to re-group, get more outside support and dig in, 2) the loss of the narrative has accelerated outside impacts such as sanctions, support for Ukraine etc, when a quick war was supposed to mitigate that, 3) the political objective of a quick install of a friendly regime is damned near impossible if you have to level half the country to win, and 4) they are running out of time in the backfield of domestic support.

So what?  Well if they have not completely lost their minds, you look as dangerous as you can and try to get concessions at a negotiated end-state and call it a “win”.  Or you double down and go for a bunch of Sarajevos and pray domestic support doesn’t turn to revolution in the 6-12 months it will take you to create a veneer of control (good luck in the Carpathians), then you Balkanize the part you think won’t kill you in your sleep and get the hell out…Peace with Honour.  Or you go WMD and hope for a Nagasaki moment that forces the Ukrainians to surrender quickly, assuming you don’t start WW3.  Then brace for a long burning low level insurgency and likely terrorist actions inside Russia while preparing to become either a third world nation or a satellite of the Chinese after the resolve on economic sanctions sets up to last for a generation.

It is not the tactical incompetence that is baffling, it is the total strategic train wreck.  I mean this was a thousand points of failure plan at best but the box they built for themselves is already likely one of the greatest strategic military failures of the 21st century, and to be totally honest that was already a fairly high bar - see Kabul last Aug.

So this will really come down to how long and how hard the Ukrainians really want to resist, they definitely have the means and support, another Russian strategic blunder.  They are gaining the know-how very quickly.  All that remains is the motivation and that is up to the Ukrainians to decide but having watched old women and men stand in front of tanks, only the dimmest Russian commander would be unworried by this point.

Edited March 1, 2022 by The_Capt

[MikeyD]

At this point Russia has entered the 'sunk cost fallacy' portion of the war. They've invested too many lives and too much material to back down but there's zero hope of profiting off this even if they succeed. Its a lose-lose situation. Logic tells them to stop - just stop now. But we all know they can't stop. 

[BornGinger]

10 hours ago, dan/california said:

It is a god awful tragedy for 99.999% of Russians, too. Real value of Every asset in Russia is off by 80% this morning, By Friday it might be 95%. FOR WHAT?

So it's much cheaper for the rest of us to be tourists in St. Petersburg, Moscow and other places in Russia when this war is over of course.

Those who import Russian women to get a beautiful wife which is prepared to wash his clothes and prepare his food while he watches sport on the telly won't have to worry about going to the gym or having a shower every so often. He could probably import a whole harem while he's at it while the innocent civilians in Russia are suffering from a bad economy and sanctions from USA, EU and different countries.

[billbindc]

The_Capt, I think that's really spot on.

Another 'odd' issue is the clear reluctance of Russian air assets to engage in ground attack. Part of that may be simply that they don't trust their AA ground assets to not shoot at them...which is a pretty bad commentary on their readiness. Another reason may be that their pilots are averaging under 100 hours/year in the seat and they don't trust them to be able to accomplish the mission. You would think that they'd have trained up for invading a country of 40 million people but apparently not.

 

[danfrodo]

Putin cares about Putin.  And Putin thinks doubling down is the only way forward, for whatever reasons in his own head.  But this whole thing has been so stupid from the start.  The only way Putin ever goes down is getting the population, elite and military against him.  And voila!  He's on his way to that!  Genius!

Unfortunately, that's a big army the Ukrainians have to stop.  Very big.  I wonder how far the new weapons are in the logistical pipeline.  Gonna need a lot of ATGMs & stingers.  Gonna need a lot of rations. 

[BletchleyGeek]

50 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

It is not the tactical incompetence that is baffling, it is the total strategic train wreck.  I mean this was a thousand points of failure plan at best but the box they built for themselves is already likely one of the greatest strategic military failures of the 21st century, and to be totally honest that was already a fairly high bar - see Kabul last Aug

By early Day 2 of this war it looked to me that the Russian armed forces were doing a "reconnaissance in force" in the North and Northeast, something that has been part of their operational thinking since the 1930s.

But the - now it is very clear - failed airmobile operation did not seem consistent with a recon in force. You don't leave stranded high quality troops like that if you don't plan on relieving them, and doing so quickly. Quite surprisingly, given the very poor results obtained by Soviet airborne ops in World War 2, the Soviet Union retained a quite massive airborne force (like 4 times the size of the US one, where WW2 paratroopers were in positions of very high influence). So those guys are probably considered to be elite, and given a lot of institutional clout. This great essay with the title When Failure Thrives is quite a good read for historical context

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/WhenFailureThrives.pdf

On the other hand, it is well documented that Russian airborne forces train very often for drops of not just light infantry, but also light artillery and armoured vehicles via helicopter. Of which we haven't seen any evidence of having been part of the aidrop (we have seen plenty of BMD-1 fighting around Irpin and Bucha, NW of Kyiv, but those came overland not via aerial ferry). So either the airborne op was probably a recon in force, something that seems to me run against the concept of vertical envelopment and conservation of force, or it was a part of plan that was relying on achieving strategic results via "shock and awe", and a bit of Special Forces bullsh*t (if Chechen mercs can be considered special forces).

The original plan seemed to be relying on two twin double envelopments: of Kyiv in the West, and of the UKR forces on the Line of Control in the Donbas. The former, seemingly done with inadequate forces, to obtain a political decision, the second one to achieve a fait accompli, and seemingly the strongest along what should be the easiest axis (southern Ukraine is like Kansas... not very good terrain for defence, as both the Red Army and the Wehrmacht found the hard way in 1941 and 1943).

I think that we can't help idealizing the planning and execution of military operations, and our preconceived notions muddle our ability to analyze what is going on.

Edited March 1, 2022 by BletchleyGeek

[sburke]

57 minutes ago, BletchleyGeek said:

I think that we can't help idealizing the planning and execution of military operations, and our preconceived notions muddle our ability to analyze what is going on.

I saw a quote earlier today from one analyst

This wasn't case of a bad army not implementing a good plan or a good army trying to implement a bad plan.  it is just a freakin bad army.  The title was something like yes the Russian Army really is as bad as you think or something like that.  Been trying to find it again so far without much luck.

 

And Ukraine (and the world) has another hero to cheer on. Olena Zelenska is now getting some coverage as well. 

Edited March 1, 2022 by sburke

[BletchleyGeek]

2 minutes ago, sburke said:

The tile was something like yes the Russian Army really is as bad as you think or something like that.  Been trying to find it again so far without much luck.

I would say that all armies start bad until they eventually "git gud" or are defeated. I will try to look up those keywords.

Edited March 1, 2022 by BletchleyGeek

[akd]

3 minutes ago, sburke said:

And Ukraine (and the world) has another hero to cheer on. Olena Zelenska is now getting some coverage as well. 

Is this what you are referencing?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/28/fact-check-ukraine-first-lady-olena-zelenska-not-shown-viral-photo/6976620001/

[BletchleyGeek]

6 minutes ago, sburke said:

yes the Russian Army really is as bad as you think

Google gave me this as the first hit for that sentence

https://www.vox.com/22954833/russia-ukraine-invasion-strategy-putin-kyiv

Quote

“The simplest explanation here is that the Russian military is bad! It was a paper tiger, and now the paper’s on fire,” writes Brett Friedman, a Marine Corps reserve officer and author of the book On Tactics.

All Hail our New Overlords, the Stochastic Parrots!

Edited March 1, 2022 by BletchleyGeek

[sburke]

3 minutes ago, akd said:

Is this what you are referencing?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/28/fact-check-ukraine-first-lady-olena-zelenska-not-shown-viral-photo/6976620001/

no actually this

Ukraine's steadfast First Lady: Olena Zelenska (msn.com)

[sburke]

3 minutes ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Google gave me this as the first hit for that sentence

https://www.vox.com/22954833/russia-ukraine-invasion-strategy-putin-kyiv

All Hail our New Overlords, the Stochastic Parrots!

yeah saw that one, but no not it.  This one went into detail on things like the service time of conscripts, continuing failure to develop a professional NCO force, training time for pilots etc.  Honestly it didn't really cover anything that hasn't been discussed here, but it was a good concise overview.

[BletchleyGeek]

18 minutes ago, sburke said:

This one went into detail on things like the service time of conscripts, continuing failure to develop a professional NCO force, training time for pilots etc.

No worries @sburke 

[billbindc]

Another odd thing...the incredibly bad accuracy of the Russian Iskanders: 

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by billbindc

[sburke]

34 minutes ago, BletchleyGeek said:

No worries @sburke 

found it

No, You’re Not Imagining It: Russia’s Army Is Inept (msn.com)

[BeondTheGrave]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I am not sure how the academics in your lecture think a military intelligence picture is built up but it is pretty much by stringing together a lot of information like this (a lot more) into a coherent picture. 

Ironically this is exactly how one practices history (building a bunch of documents, meaningless in isolation, into a more coherent whole.) I think your and many posters here experience is different in what 'sources' you look at and how your intellectual frame work helps you answer your questions. Academics (at least of our stripe) will focus on texts, actions, and docs to answer big picture systematic questions. People in this thread are attacking the problem the opposite direction, using images, reports, videos, tweets to build a bottom up understanding. Both meet in the middle and ask eachother 'What the **** is going on?'

Anyway I'm glad at least someone made sense of what I wrote. I'm not sure I agree with the military analysis presented, and I dont want this to turn in to "WeLl My PrOfEsSoR sAiD..." For the record I think I more or less agree with you. Rather I just wanted to bring in a perspective I havn't seen many others post and that isn't explicit talking points. Plus I think, all problems aside, there is as much evidence to suggest that Russia will win and that Putin will spin this enough to (in the short term) save his skin. Even if 'victory' is Afghanistan 3.0. Even if eventually it brings him down. I wish for the opposite, and well see. Another point that came up, one that others have mentioned, is that the Lviv/western border region currently flooding with western kit? In those same forests many Ukranian's grand fathers fought ten, or even in some cases fifteen years from the Nazi invasion (though many Ukrainian resistance groups date back to the Holodomor!) to 1960 when organized anti-Soviet resistance ended. And those rebels didn't have American backing and high tech kit like an NLAW. 

[BeondTheGrave]

1 hour ago, BletchleyGeek said:

On the other hand, it is well documented that Russian airborne forces train very often for drops of not just light infantry, but also light artillery and armoured vehicles via helicopter. Of which we haven't seen any evidence of having been part of the aidrop (we have seen plenty of BMD-1 fighting around Irpin and Bucha, NW of Kyiv, but those came overland not via aerial ferry). So either the airborne op was probably a recon in force, something that seems to me run against the concept of vertical envelopment and conservation of force, or it was a part of plan that was relying on achieving strategic results via "shock and awe", and a bit of Special Forces bullsh*t (if Chechen mercs can be considered special forces).

On day 1 & 2 as I recall (corrections for mistakes) the Russians attempted at least two, and maybe more, attempts to land additional troops to relieve or recapture the contested air field. I distinctly recall having read that an entire VDV division turned back rather than drop. You also recall claims that IL76s have been shot down with a belly still full of troops. Im not entirely sure why the Russians didn't go for a straight combat drop, it seems like they wanted to land to unload. Perhaps they felt that the urban terrain was too congested for safe landings? Or they feared SHORAD would eat up the paras before they hit the ground? Whatever the case paratroopers returned to their bases rather than land. IMO it was probably the biggest botchjob of the first day, second being (though both IMO are highly related, probably stem from the same cause overconfidence) the failed SEAD/DEAD campaign. A division of VDV with armor in Kyiv on day two would have probably been disasters. Even if they had to hold out, failed to move into the city, they could have formed a fortress for the armored spearheads to leap off of. 

Whatever punctured the VDV plan is probably whatever poison lay at the heart of the whole mess. 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

Folks...billbindc here...who you may remember from the benighted days of dosomefink.

Great to see you again, or somefink   You know we hired one of your kind.  More inexplicably, we hired one who is real life friends with Peng.  Crazy stuff, right?

In the spirit of old, I will address you in the manner to which you had become accustomed to.  Don't thank me yet!

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

Been talking to a lot of folks and I'd say the "Putin has lost it" thing is over rated and on some level the Russians trying to benefit from madman theory. Putin has been a Russian imperialist forever. It's been his idee fixe since the fall of the USSR. In one "near abroad" country after another, he's either coerced them back into the fold (Chechenia), enforced informal hegemony (Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine) or attacked them outright (Ukraine, Georgia). He has also constantly tested the limits from corrupt influence to outright assassination (Salisbury anyone?). What he's doing now isn't new, it is simply a reflection of the greater abilities he believes he possesses. At no time has he behaved suicidally.  He will rattle sabers and he will do what he thinks he can get away with. The smart thing for us to do is remain cool, stay out of direct conflict and give every boot/5.56 round/Javelin/MRE to the Ukrainians we can lay our hands on.  

There are two ways to think through the "Putin has lost it" theory.  One is that he's nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake.  Or fruitier.  Either way, cake.

The second is that something changed in his mental state to have him significantly alter his sense of risk and reduce his forward thinking vision from decades to years.  Age might have something to do with that last bit.  This means he is still "sane" by most technical definitions, but not really the same as he once was.

I believe the latter is the case, not the former.  To elaborate, I'm reposting something I wrote earlier today elsewhere with slight edits so I don't violate forum rules (in real life I swear like a drunken sailor who just ran out of pocket money by the time I got to the brothel):

 

Here's how I look at this crisis.

I'm a huge fan of Putin's work.  OK, fan isn't the correct word... intellectual admirer of how he gets what he wants despite all of the factors lined up against him.  IMHO he is probably the most brilliant authoritarian figure in modern history.  He has played to his strengths and shielded his weaknesses like nobody else I can think of that has ever accumulated that much power.  Others aspire to be like him, but he's the one setting the standard they wish to achieve.  As a historian type who has studied this for nearly 30 years, I have huge respect for what he's done.  That doesn't mean I like the guy or wish him a long and prosperous life (though at stealing $100 Billion for himself, he nailed part of this already).

This time around he did the thing he has never done before.  He came up with a concept that was inherently unworkable, then devised a plan that looked good only because it got the fundamentals so wrong.  That's difference number one.

Difference number two is he pursued a plan that had very little wiggle room for error.  That's not like him.  He has always built "slop" into his plans so that if something went wrong he could switch to something else and still hope to achieve his goals.  He also devised these things to be flexibly applied.  Something really wrong could get a really big swing in action, something a little wrong could be kept with a minor adjustment.

Difference number three is that he has always shown a real knack for doing something nefarious right up to the line of things going badly, put a couple of toes over the line to see how it goes, then either steps over or steps back depending on the feedback from his action.  This time he has things structured that he has to keep moving forward no matter how far over the line he gets.

So we have here a bad combination of things; epic miscalculated and calibrated Plan A, very little room for sufficiently practical or flexible backup plans, and seemingly no inclination to back off to preserve gains and try again another day.

Therefore, he is pretty much hemmed in at this point without good options.  That is a new thing for Putin and it introduces the possibility that something serious has changed in how he approaches the same things he's always wanted -> Empire and everything that goes with it.

Steve

[melm]

2 hours ago, BeondTheGrave said:

We had a long seminar on the Ukraine crisis at my Uni today, if they post a video I'll upload it. (not sure, there were tech problems) Mostly it was everything a lot of you guys already know, and to a room of undergraduates. The crowd skewed older, 20-22, but much of the discussion varied from basic questions about historical context to ideologically driven questions about how to 'make the world a better place.' Most of the students had their hearts in the right place and brought some interesting questions. 

Some interesting points that came up: Our resident expert on political economy had a lot to say about sanctions and Russia's future. He suggested that in the short term the Russian economy was heavily insulated from economic shocks. Its war chest was large and sanctions, while bold in concept, were not as extensive as the west makes them out to be. My previous predictions of doom (I believe I compared the Russian economy to Chernobyl) may have been a bit..... enthusiastic. He suggested that between access to Chinese markets, German reluctance to pull the plug on gas, and the watering down of SWIFT sanctions, the situation today isn't as bad as first appears. On SWIFT specifically the prof said that banking sanctions are all or nothing, if even one bank is excluded it will become the breathing tube for the rest of the economy. So long as banks in Russia are willing to play ball, and the west doesn't plug the tube, a single bank can float much of the rest of the system. More troubling in the long run, he suggested that this sanctions regime has probably destroyed the Russian economy for a generation, and a bad generation it will be. He pointed out, correctly, that Russian manufacturing lags behind the rest of Europe. This is because the ruble is artificially overvalued thanks to oil. More people buy oil, more people want rubles, more people want rubles, ruble price goes up. But Russian industry isn't up to the value of the ruble and that blocks foreign investment. What little foreign investment there has just died. China was building a new Jetliner with Russian companies. That will almost certainly die thanks to western sanctions. So will most east-west trade deals with Russian businesses. Companies will still want to make one of deals with Russia (we'll buy x mil bbls of oil at y price) but nobody will make long term deals with a country that is so economically self destructive all the time. The situation that Russia is facing is the same as Venezuela in a way. Tons of economic potential but nobody is willing to make a deal or help them out because of poor policy. The only exception is in Oil (Russia has more mineral wealth of course, but its biggest and most valuable is oil). Several problems with Russian oil. First sanctions will crash the price of Russian oil. Bad but not catastrophic. Second and more catastrophic, Russian oil is extremely expensive per bbl to pump. It and Canadian oil sands (said the professor) are the most expensive to pump in the world. Much of this is down to geography. Russian oil is remote, its really far from its customers, and its in some pretty bad terrain above the Arctic circle. Saudi Oil, on the other hand, is the cheapest /bbl. Third Russia will never pump more oil than it does today, in a broad sense. That is, the world is moving away from petroleum energy just like it did with coal and wood and dung. The single greatest 'sanction' the EU could impose is a law banning gas heating in new construction. And theyd be glad to do it, because its green. Between green energy and green cars and green cities, the world is going to use less and less oil. Russia will be the first to suffer. 

Both the military historian and the Russian historian were pretty set that Ukraine would not last much longer without a fundamental revision in the conflict. The Russian historian was pretty convinced that Putin would not lose power to a popular movement in the short term, though he did note that the last two times regime change came to Russia it was after a failed war. He felt though that this conflict, while embarrassing, was not so bloody or onerous as World War One. More of a risk was the oligarch and military classes. They have less tolerance for failure and economic chaos. Putin, the thought, is more likely to drink polonium tea than he is to be gunned down in a dacha basement. Both also agreed that if the fundamental situation did not change, the Russian bear would eventually squeeze the life out of Ukraine. Though one student did ask a question that went mostly unanswered about parallels to Iraq. Hard to convey exactly what was said, I think that many of you would agree with most of the facts they laid out but some would definitely challenge the tone. Shame @The_Capt wasn't there to ask a more stark question about the possibility of an insurgency. 

RE social media the group also pointed out something everyone should remember, lot of bad videos out there, lot of partial information. Everything we see here in this thread, on Reddit, on Twitter is very biased. Even if the person who filmed it didn't think so, there are strong perspective biases that were getting here. We maybe see 1% of whats really going on. 1% of 1%. Just because I havn't seen T-90s doesn't mean they arnt out there (plsplspls post every T-90 or BMP-3 vid you see, and if you see a wrecked T-14, put that pic in a mail and send it to me!) Just because we see a pattern evolving doesn't mean our analysis is based on good info. I dont mean to poo-poo everything were doing here or what were posting, I just want to throw in a little cold water and put things into perspective. It was a point, to be honest, that hit me close to home. 

We also had a few Ukrainian students come and say a little bit. A former Yugoslavian professor also reminded the room that its all abstract theory and ideology when youre in a classroom in rural Ohio. Its a lot different when its your home, your family, your life on the line. That was a bit of cold water I think. I bring it up just so that we can all take a second to think about the real people, Russian and Ukrainian, who are dying over things were writing pet theories about. For us its info-tainment. For them its life and limb. Respect to those risking life and limb to bring us news and updates.  

If I think of anything else worth mentioning I will, if they post the video link (again, there were tech problems they may not) I will. Mostly though the questions were pretty basic, but from the sense of the student's questions more generally it seemed like most were genuinely curious about the context of the conflict rather than the type whose already decided ahead of time. We also have a good bunch here though. I also have a vague feeling that Zoomers, for better and worse, are very open to new ideas. I dont want this to devolve in to a generational schlacht so Ill stop, I think Elvis barely survived this mornings slap fights. 

Thanks for the post. I enjoy your seminar notes very much. It's my familiar academic taste when I was working on my PhD. I hold the same "not that optimistic" view with the professors you've mentioned in your note. And I am afraid that when Putin faces hard time, the war will go more brutal, which is the last thing I want to see.

[Vic4]

In light of @BeondTheGrave's post for considering “wider” perspectives; the link below is to an opinion piece that skews to the Russian perspective (of which I’m not a subscriber). However, the essential premise is that U.S. policy and their influence of expanding NATO into the Russian sphere since the fall of the USSR is ultimately to blame for this conflict. I don’t have the depth of knowledge to confirm or deny their allegations but there are some points made about the development and evolution of NATO after the fall of the USSR and how it informs Putin’s worldview. Curious if anyone here has read it or considered its’ stance and what your thoughts are regarding.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-expansion-war-russia-ukraine

Edited March 1, 2022 by Vic4
Clarity/Context