How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[panzermartin]

7 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Russian BMP shot out civilian car. Two killed.

 

This is horrible 

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

This @The_Capt you should totally getting a Twitter account and put up a picture of you in a dapper suit and see if you can get some nice gigs as resident military pundit as well

Heh, I have an already pretty active day job.  Think of this as bonus customer service - check out the gift shop while you are here!

[Commanderski]

4 hours ago, kraze said:

NATO is very much off the table at this point for one major reason

Based on the support that NATO countries are giving the Ukraine now and them seeing how ineffective Russia is they would be willing to get more involved if Russia attacked a NATO country.

Maybe not all of the NATO countries but at the very least you would definitely be able to count on Poland.

[akd]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The solution, of course, is for Russia to draft a whole bunch of new recruits.  Their biannual callup is coming, however it won't do them any good unless they can squash Ukrainian resistance well ahead of then.

Found this just published document on this aspect of the Russian war effort.  Their conclusion?  Not surprisingly, Russia can't raise good enough forces quickly enough for it to matter:

Putin stated on television yesterday that neither reservists (reportedly starting to leave Russia in significant numbers) nor conscripts would be sent to Ukraine, so either he is lying (quite possible, but not one that is easy to conceal), or he just hamstringed his ability to send much of anything else at all.  My concern is that the strategy may be to hunker down and start systematically destroying the cities with long range fires until Ukraine accepts terms.

Edited March 8, 2022 by akd

[Lethaface]

12 minutes ago, Commanderski said:

Based on the support that NATO countries are giving the Ukraine now and them seeing how ineffective Russia is they would be willing to get more involved if Russia attacked a NATO country.

Maybe not all of the NATO countries but at the very least you would definitely be able to count on Poland.

In principle it is simple. Ukraine is not in NATO. So, no NATO article 5 involvement. 

The fact that some previous operations / coalitions had some NATO sticker applied to it, was more of a geopolitical choice and none of these were a direct result from article 5 compulsory response (irrelevant what one thinks of those operations i.e. good/bad).

The only article 5 was 9/11. 

If Libya had SSBNs, ICBMs, a large airforce and AA network there wouldn't have been a 'NATO no-fly' zone there either. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Lethaface

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Lethaface said:

It is an interesting feat that a lot of the 'think tanks' and geopolotical / military strategy experts keep stating that Russia will be able to press on the attack and take Kiev and Charkov (although all predict guerilla war starting after), vs the observations in this thread, that Russia won't be able to keep up sustaining the losses in men and equipment, as well as the consequences these have on the 'will to fight' among Russian troops.

I think the major difference between discussions here and what I have seen from a lot of the "experts" is that they seem to focusing on quantitative assessment, while we are largely focus on qualitative.  We can count up the losses and numbers as well as any right now but when linking that back to qualitative deductions one comes up with different conclusions.

I mean one can see that about 10% of the Russian invasion force of tanks has been attrited.  From a quantitative view that is not great but losses are to be expected in front line capability and it likely matches some other similar military actions.  Then if one takes the remaining 90% versus big red spaces on the map, I can see how people are coming to the conclusions that they are.  What is missing is all the weird stuff, like most of those tanks have been abandoned either out of gas or crews just left.  That is a qualitative observation on how or why those tanks were lost beyond what was lost.  

I am not surprised that a forum of avid wargamers and students of history are taking a broader qualitative system view, and frankly the real experts/analysist who work for government/military are doing the exact same thing (with better data).  In the end events will confirm or deny which viewpoint has been correct and the truth is probably somewhere in between.  What has been interesting is that we here have been about 24-48 hours ahead of mainstream in a lot of ways.  In the first couple of days we noted some odd signals and had pretty much decided that the "quick war" was a loss by the end of the first weekend.  Then experts caught up and complimented "Ukrainian resistance", when it was in fact a pretty convincing military defence, and were stating that Ukraine may hold out for a couple weeks but the end was going to be the same.  As things unfolded it became more apparent here that the Russian war machine had stalled hard - while mainstream media was pointing to the looming 64km convoy North of Kyiv - which turned out to be a parking lot and by now is likely turning into a graveyard.  We began to wonder if the Russians might even get to the siege phase.

Now most experts are still seeing a brutal siege phase and a long term guerilla war.  Here in our little bubble it is looking more likely that the Russians will have to be halting broad offensive action soon and we could see this turn into a stalemate scenario...all largely based on qualitative assessment of 1) Russian inability to establish what should have ben pre-conditions such as information and air superiority, 2) very poor Russian logistical performance, 3) Signs of eroding Russian morale, 4) Baffling Russian C2, and 5) The increasing/acceleration of Ukrainian will and capability to fight.  This is beyond the changes in strategic narrative from Russia, who went from "unconditional surrender" to "conditional surrender" in about 10 days.  As well as the growing impact of what has become the economic equivalent to a nuclear war against Russia. 

We will see how close everyone is as this thing unfolds, we could be wrong or too optimistic based on a steady stream of what may be fairly isolated events but when strung together on social media look like a trend.  The major shift I am looking for right now is signs of Russian defensive operations like minefields, major digging in and the like.  At the strategic level we might start seeing less of Putin and the identification of a new "spokesperson", this may be a sign of a shifting power dynamic at the top. 

I recall back in 2014 the Russian Foreign Minister saying "if Russia wanted to, we could be in Kyiv in two weeks" or words to that effect, well that is Thurs and so far they can't even seem to be able to cordon Kyiv, let alone control it; there are strange rattling and scraping sounds coming out of the Russian War Machine.  All the while Ukraine is waging an information war that is now the Gold Standard and a employing a hybrid operational approach that will be actively studied for a century at least. 

In another reality, if I were on the Russian Military Staff and had a golden Willie Wonka ticket to say whatever I wanted without repercussions, it would be "Get out, now.  They are not surrounded, we are." 

[laribe]

We have them where we want them, they all around us

[DesertFox]

NEW: US to ban all Russian oil, coal and gas

Now lets see what the EU will do.

 

 

[Phantom Captain]

17 minutes ago, laribe said:

We have them where we want them, they all around us

"They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards." - Creighton Abrams

Edited March 8, 2022 by Phantom Captain

[TheVulture]

29 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I recall back in 2014 the Russian Foreign Minister saying "if Russia wanted to, we could be in Kyiv in two weeks" or words to that effect, well that is Thurs and so far they can't even seem to be able to cordon Kyiv, let alone control it; there are strange rattling and scraping sounds coming out of the Russian War Machine. 

Also, I think that "two weeks to Kiev" quote was also with the context of starting operations from Russia, not having Belarus as a convenient launching pad less than 100km from Kiev. They've given themselves a head-start and still have no hope of achieving it.

[kraze]

41 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I recall back in 2014 the Russian Foreign Minister saying "if Russia wanted to, we could be in Kyiv in two weeks" or words to that effect, well that is Thurs and so far they can't even seem to be able to cordon Kyiv, let alone control it;

Two weeks? Putin himself said that if he wanted - he'd take Kyiv in two days.

And apparently that was the plan. The only plan.

The fact that we are now seeing russian tanks dressed up for a parade getting tractor'd on the frontlines and a muppet Yanukovich being constantly moved back and forth between Russia and Minsk, making idiotic statements - proves that russians are still out of touch with reality and stubbornly act as if it was 2002.

They expected Yanukovich being put in power and greeting their parade tanks in Kyiv on Feb 27th with happy liberated Ukrainians throwing flowers at them, glad that we have no freedom anymore and going to concentration camps the next day with a big smile.

It's as if all of Russia is suffering from collective insanity and nobody at any point have said "waidaminute"

Edited March 8, 2022 by kraze

[Bulletpoint]

18 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

NEW: US to ban all Russian oil, coal and gas

Now lets see what the EU will do.

 

 

Nothing. EU is highly dependent on Russian oil and gas, unlike the US which only imports about 3 pct from Russia.

[akd]

12 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Nothing. EU is highly dependent on Russian oil and gas, unlike the US which only imports about 3 pct from Russia.

Yes, a largely symbolic act that will be easily made up with US production in very short order with oil at $130 and climbing.

[DesertFox]

10 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Nothing. EU is highly dependent on Russian oil and gas, unlike the US which only imports about 3 pct from Russia.

Yes I know. But they are getting into a hard to explain moral dilemma. That´s why I am curious how they will react. EU is paying Russia 600 Mio EUR per day for gas.

 

 

[Bulletpoint]

7 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Yes I know. But they are getting into a hard to explain moral dilemma. That´s why I am curious how they will react. EU is paying Russia 600 Mio EUR per day for gas.

 

 

I think it's easier for EU leaders to explain away this hypocritical moral dilemma than to explain to their voters why their energy bill has exploded...

Right now, from the perspective of the average EU citizen, somebody else is fighting and dying in Ukraine, and somebody else's economy is getting wrecked in Russia.

Also, I think the EU want to keep a few potential new sanctions ready to use in extreme circumstances.. if Putin starts using chemical weapons, the EU needs to have some kind of reaction available in order to be seen to respond. And at that point, such measures might also be easier to explain to voters.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Bulletpoint

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, melm said:

Are they willing to give them up? They may still have tension with Turkey.

Slovakia and at least one other country have some.  For a while after the wall came down the former Warsaw Pact countries continued to maintain their Soviet era forces.  Then there was a transition to Western systems where the less expensive systems (small arms, for example) were replaced first, then the more expensive systems (tanks), and then the very expensive systems (missiles and aircraft).  As with every nation, when retiring first line system the retiring system bumps the reserve system and the reserve system is (often) removed from inventory.  Missile systems are very expensive so, like aircraft, they held out longer than others.

Steve

[Fernando]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

Nothing. EU is highly dependent on Russian oil and gas, unlike the US which only imports about 3 pct from Russia.

Most of the EU is very dependent, but not all of it is. 

IIRC about 9-10% of the gas comes to Spain from Russia, but most of the gas (45%) comes from Algeria via a pipeline across the Mediterranean sea coming from that country and another one from Morocco. IIRC Spain has 6 plants for gasifying Liquefied Natural Gas and nine ports able to load LNG. The Spanish merchant fleet seems to have enough LNG ships to cover at least the Spanish needings with ease.

Spain could be used as a bridge to send gas to the rest of Europe from north Africa, butt he main problem is that there is not pipelines able to send enough gas to the rest of Europe. Perhaps LNG could be send, but some EU countries have no plants for regasifying it. For example I think that Germany has no regasifying plants, so they can not get LNG until they build some of them. I think two regasifying plants are scheduled, but it will take some time to be built. Our german friends may confirm whether it is true or not.

In short, I don't think the EU might be able to take that decision for a  time, and the Russians knew it.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Fernando

[DesertFox]

 

 

[Lethaface]

9 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Most of the EU is very dependent, but not all of it is. 

IIRC about 9-10% of the gas comes to Spain from Russia, but most of the gas (45%) comes from Algeria via a pipeline across the Meditarranean sea coming from that country and another from Morocco. IIRC Spain has 6 plants for gasifying Liquefied Natural Gas and nine ports able to load LNG. The Spanish merchant fleet seems to have enough LNG ships to cover at least the Spanish needings with ease.

Spain could be used as a bridge to send gas to the rest of Europe from north Africa, butt he main problem is that there is not pipelines able to send enough gas to the rest of Europe. Perhaps LNG could be send, but some EU countries have no plants for regasifying it. For example I think that Germany has no regasifying plants, so they can not get LNG until they build some of them. I think two regasifying plants are scheduled, but it will take some time to be built. Our german friends may confirm whether it is true or not.

In short, I don't think the EU might be able to take that decision for a  time, and the Russians knew it.

Russia is now supposedly threatening to cut gas if we ban their oil. Not sure who will hurt that one more in the long term. But indeed I don't see EU banning their energy imports without alternatives. Before the war started the energy bills were already much higher, for lower incomes their might be real problems paying the bills if gas becomes more expensive.

In the middle long term there are alternatives though. For example in NL we are sitting on some EUR 850 billion worth of gas, however due to the earthquakes involved with extraction the plan was to let that gas remain in the ground.

I guess that's under review now.

[Lethaface]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I think the major difference between discussions here and what I have seen from a lot of the "experts" is that they seem to focusing on quantitative assessment, while we are largely focus on qualitative.  We can count up the losses and numbers as well as any right now but when linking that back to qualitative deductions one comes up with different conclusions.

I mean one can see that about 10% of the Russian invasion force of tanks has been attrited.  From a quantitative view that is not great but losses are to be expected in front line capability and it likely matches some other similar military actions.  Then if one takes the remaining 90% versus big red spaces on the map, I can see how people are coming to the conclusions that they are.  What is missing is all the weird stuff, like most of those tanks have been abandoned either out of gas or crews just left.  That is a qualitative observation on how or why those tanks were lost beyond what was lost.  

I am not surprised that a forum of avid wargamers and students of history are taking a broader qualitative system view, and frankly the real experts/analysist who work for government/military are doing the exact same thing (with better data).  In the end events will confirm or deny which viewpoint has been correct and the truth is probably somewhere in between.  What has been interesting is that we here have been about 24-48 hours ahead of mainstream in a lot of ways.  In the first couple of days we noted some odd signals and had pretty much decided that the "quick war" was a loss by the end of the first weekend.  Then experts caught up and complimented "Ukrainian resistance", when it was in fact a pretty convincing military defence, and were stating that Ukraine may hold out for a couple weeks but the end was going to be the same.  As things unfolded it became more apparent here that the Russian war machine had stalled hard - while mainstream media was pointing to the looming 64km convoy North of Kyiv - which turned out to be a parking lot and by now is likely turning into a graveyard.  We began to wonder if the Russians might even get to the siege phase.

Now most experts are still seeing a brutal siege phase and a long term guerilla war.  Here in our little bubble it is looking more likely that the Russians will have to be halting broad offensive action soon and we could see this turn into a stalemate scenario...all largely based on qualitative assessment of 1) Russian inability to establish what should have ben pre-conditions such as information and air superiority, 2) very poor Russian logistical performance, 3) Signs of eroding Russian morale, 4) Baffling Russian C2, and 5) The increasing/acceleration of Ukrainian will and capability to fight.  This is beyond the changes in strategic narrative from Russia, who went from "unconditional surrender" to "conditional surrender" in about 10 days.  As well as the growing impact of what has become the economic equivalent to a nuclear war against Russia. 

We will see how close everyone is as this thing unfolds, we could be wrong or too optimistic based on a steady stream of what may be fairly isolated events but when strung together on social media look like a trend.  The major shift I am looking for right now is signs of Russian defensive operations like minefields, major digging in and the like.  At the strategic level we might start seeing less of Putin and the identification of a new "spokesperson", this may be a sign of a shifting power dynamic at the top. 

I recall back in 2014 the Russian Foreign Minister saying "if Russia wanted to, we could be in Kyiv in two weeks" or words to that effect, well that is Thurs and so far they can't even seem to be able to cordon Kyiv, let alone control it; there are strange rattling and scraping sounds coming out of the Russian War Machine.  All the while Ukraine is waging an information war that is now the Gold Standard and a employing a hybrid operational approach that will be actively studied for a century at least. 

In another reality, if I were on the Russian Military Staff and had a golden Willie Wonka ticket to say whatever I wanted without repercussions, it would be "Get out, now.  They are not surrounded, we are." 

Good points. Time will tell how things unroll, I sometimes wonder if the 'think tanks / experts' have more data which we/ I don't have. For example UKR casualties. I haven't seen much more arguments from the think tanks / experts than that 'Russia has the strength / combat power and the will to take losses'. 
Some mention logistics but most seem to assume Russia will overcome these issues.

 

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, Lethaface said:

Russia is now supposedly threatening to cut gas if we ban their oil.

Ok, so there has been a lot of finger pointing at the US on what it, should have done, should do or not do etc.  I think it is time to point that finger back at Europe on this point.  Who thought it was a good idea to become energy dependent on a nation that has been causing ruckus since 2008, did a soft invasion of another European nation in 2014, has been pulling stunts in the backfield ever since then and now has demonstrated just how unstable it is?

This is worse than US dependence on Arab oil, which they have worked very hard to get rid of, as Arabs can be jerks and support terrorism but they are not likely to invade with 100k plus troops.

Can someone explain this one to me?  Because the Euros that paid for that gas found their way to funding this fiasco and no one seems to be saying to much about it.

[kraze]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Who thought it was a good idea to become energy dependent on a nation that has been causing ruckus since 2008

Ugh, this was a second invasion of Georgia, not even the first one, which happened back in 1993.

But back in the '90s and up until 2014 the West tried to pretend like nothing was happening, like Russia had the right to ex-USSR countries and everybody kept shush about it because russian money and resources mattered more than lives in a dozen countries russians invaded in the past 30 years.

Everybody was crossdressing into a peace dove as russian soldiers were cutting out civilian intestines and popping no less civilian eyeballs all around the globe.

So, of course, spoon feeding the new Hitler brought us to this moment and now everybody is very very 'concerned'.

Edited March 8, 2022 by kraze

[akd]

T-72B3M T-80BVM now in Ukrainian service:

Edited March 10, 2022 by akd

[Lethaface]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, so there has been a lot of finger pointing at the US on what it, should have done, should do or not do etc.  I think it is time to point that finger back at Europe on this point.  Who thought it was a good idea to become energy dependent on a nation that has been causing ruckus since 2008, did a soft invasion of another European nation in 2014, has been pulling stunts in the backfield ever since then and now has demonstrated just how unstable it is?

This is worse than US dependence on Arab oil, which they have worked very hard to get rid of, as Arabs can be jerks and support terrorism but they are not likely to invade with 100k plus troops.

Can someone explain this one to me?  Because the Euros that paid for that gas found their way to funding this fiasco and no one seems to be saying to much about it.

I think that touches a larger geopolitical issue of blocs, spheres of influence and whether people think (or thought) these were still into play.

The easy argument to make is that nobody in EU would have been surprised that USA rather sold it's own gas to EU than Russia's gas. 

Some people in the EU (including me) feel/felt that the EU should be more independent as a 'bloc'. The other side of the medal is that independence also comes with security (which we can't manage ourselves yet) and for the EU there is/was an issue about unity as well.
Coupled with politics, bureaucracy and 25 nations 'in discord'.

I don't think anyone really expected Putin to go for regime change in Ukraine. And yes in hindsight it is a fair point to make imo, that EU has partially funded this war. Then again anyone who traded on large/state level with Russia has partially funded this war.

I think people aren't saying much about it because of, well, the political sensitivity ('we were wrong' is difficult to say for politicians). 
Between the sheets it's easy to validate though, Germany is moving towards energy independence and investing EUR 100 Bn plus 2%+ per year in it's defense. 

So clearly a case of a paradigm shift.

At the same time there are geopolitical analysts (on both sides of ocean) stating that aggressive Western (USA) geopolitical strategy is the cause of this and that all could have been diverted if we would have allowed Russia in NATO or had made clear that Ukraine wouldn't join NATO.

Personally I'm not in that camp, although I think that NATO / West should also look at itself. 
But that 'ship' has sailed so I doubt there will be much looking in the mirror.

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, cyrano01 said:

The only problem is that, if I were the Ukrainians, I wouldn't be 100% confident that NATO, and especially not the EU, would be willing or able to enforce these in the future. 5 or 10 years out I suspect that there might be no appetite to use military action to enforce treaty conditions against a re-armed and revisionist (and still nuclear armed) Russia. Any more than the western allies were willing to take action when Hitler re-militarised the Rhineland in 1936.

The alternative is... not have any alliances with legal teeth in it to protect itself from Russian aggression?  I think it's better to get NATO and the EU to commit to something and then see how things go.

If things go the right way there will be a change of foreign policy in Russia that moves it away from beating up its neighbors to feel good about itself.  That won't happen overnight, but given enough disincentives for aggression it is possible to get started on that.

EDIT to add that becoming a full member of NATO is also a possibility for Ukraine.  That should be up to Ukraine and NATO, not Russia (long standing argument here from Russia!).  But for now, if I were Ukraine I'd not be pushing that particular point.  It's not necessary.

Steve