How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[akd]

“A bad army was ordered to do something stupid.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/is-the-russian-military-a-paper-tiger

[Battlefront.com]

Newsweek article on an ex-USMC veteran who is training Ukrainians.  He says Russia is worse than ISIS.  Yikes.

https://www.newsweek.com/im-former-us-marine-training-ukrainians-russians-worse-isis-1699415

There was a CNN interview with him posted a few pages back where he complained about all the stuff piling up in Liviv and not getting to the front.  He's both right and wrong with that criticism from what I can tell.  The aid is not being distributed fast enough or perhaps evenly enough, but it isn't all sitting there not being used.  It could also be that Ukraine is trying to have some sort of reserve stock or it's holding onto things for the newly forming units to take with them when they've completed their training.  The problem with being at the bottom end of the food chain is you're rarely in possession of all the facts, so I think everything he said in that interview was true from his perspective and experience, but not necessarily accurate.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Cool!!  I was the first post of the 600th page.  Yea me

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

57 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

An interesting twitter round up tonight.

The report about the Kherson resistance is interesting to me

Yeah, they started keeping track of those reports quite recently.  Which means the information is probably only recently being put out there to put on the record.  IIRC a few days ago there was a similar level of kills accounted for in the neighboring Zaporizhia Oblast, centered around the city of Melitopol.

57 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Could help to explain timing of the Kyiv withdraw as well.

Nah, nothing to do with it.  Those forces were in no condition to move anyway as they were near collapse weeks before they were withdrawn.  They were also needed reinforce the depleted forces around Donbas.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

One noteworthy exception may be @Haiduk's correspondent reporting

Russians also, understanding hazard of UKR mobile AT-teams, inolved more SOF and recon forces for hunting them. Especially Russians actively conduct own search in night time.

I had expected this development for some time now, as organizing and sending out kill squads to stalk and ambush other infantry doesn't take much more than motivation and fieldcraft.

Your last line is what differentiates the Haiduk reporting from what I'm talking about.  Low level survival knowledge tends to spread fast and if there's something that can be done it usually is done.  Here are some other examples of Russians adapting:

1.  if the vehicle next to you blows up, abandon yours because you likely have seconds until you're burned up

2. if a civilian vehicle comes towards you, shoot first and ask questions later.  Could be Partisans

3.  if there's a male civilian of fighting age in the house, shoot him in the head just in case he's a Partisan or spy

I'm not completely serious with these two, but I'm also not joking either.  There's patterns of behavior that have emerged and I doubt there was any formal training for these activities, they just came about naturally.

Steve

[Canada Guy]

A few thoughts

- the Russian forces are used to having quantity as the determining factor, as quantity has a quality all of its own. They used this method in WWII and in almost every other war they have fought (e.g. Georgia, Afghan). Once they could not afford to field an army in the millions, the doctrine of weight lost its ability to fight a near peer. 

- the Russians do have the ability to adapt, but it takes years as the system is resistant to change and there has to be some big setbacks to force change (all militaries tend to be change resistant but this goes above and beyond as corruption is the lifeblood of this leadership,  changing the system takes away big money). It took a few years in Afghan but at a tactical level is did become more proficient against a disorganized and fractured foe - air-mobile troops funneling jihadis into kill zones. They were still crap but they became  better than their opponent. Not a chance here as both time and the proficiency of the UA is working against them. 

- The Soviet/Russian system is plan oriented and not goal oriented (Look at Egypt in the Arab-Israeli wars).  You work towards the written plan, not the goal. But this is the better choice in a system with top down leadership. Authoritarian systems cannot allow a flexible structure as it may lead to an independent officer corp which creates greater problems.

- as with an independent officer corp, you also cannot allow your citizens to see the dynamism in a flexible near state. Russia cannot allow an independent Ukraine, China cannot allow a democratic Taiwan nor a democratic North Korea.

- How does a country with GDP smaller than Canada cause so much trouble? I can only imagine the power Russia would have had if it would have turned its focus onto enhancing its own society. A successful Russia with 4 x the GDP (just to be on par with Canada let alone the USA) would have actually created a counter-point to America and could have joined/directed the EU as Germany does today. It could have had respect, power, a rich and stable society. But perhaps it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heavan.

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So Russia does not change its military approach, even when facing an existential threat, in anything less than years.  This tracks because some of the issues we have observed here take years to fix, like the re-creation of a formation layer over BTGs, and Joint integration of effects and C4ISR.

That's what history seems to teach us.  Even if some brave Russian general told Putin what he didn't want to hear, survived the encounter, and provided Putin with a blueprint for converting Russia's theoretical power to real power, the sorts of problems Russia has can not be fixed in the field.  The worst problems, in fact, require Russians to cease being Russians.  I'm speaking about the extremely low value they place on Human life.  Even their own.  That is not something you can fix in 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years, or 2 decades.

Let's remember that the US military took a fair amount of time (months and years) to significantly alter how it fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.  This from a well resourced, highly functional military structure that has a ton of flexibility built into it from the ground up. 

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So the deduction here is that dramatic changes to Russian operational/tactical warfare are not going to change in the 3-4 weeks they have had, and all signs point to this (e.g. lack of recon phase, still failing to establish operational conditions etc).  So a lot of narrative we hear on mainstream analysis is that by appointing a single commander (even one without any experience in this type of fight) and stuffing more mass into the problem that the Russians are going to walk out of the phone booth and suddenly become proficient in combined arms and joint warfare, and be able translate that into major gains, appears somewhat mis-aligned with our assessment of the reality of the situation.

Largely correct, though there's some subtlety to note.

The definition of "change" is subjective in this case.  Can the Russians change how they fight this war?  Yes.  Can the Russians change in order to win this war?  No.

Russia can make some changes and, in fact, have.  Trying to blow up enough of Ukraine to get a surrender is the biggest one.  Withdrawing their forces from around Kyiv must have been horrendously difficult for them, but they did it.  Appointing a single commander means an improvement of logistics where (theoretically) resources will be better directed compared to before.  Aircraft are being used far more cautiously than they previously were.  And I'm sure there is no longer any illusion that fighting the Ukrainians is an easy thing.

However significant these changes might be, no matter if they produce tangible results on the battlefield, they aren't what's causing Russia to lose this war and therefore won't change the outcome in any significant way.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

And this is another excellent point.  In order to really create major change, the Russian military would have to admit failure, and nothing points to them as willing to accept this, particularly in an unforgiving autocratic regime.

This is one of the fascinating things about the relationship between the Third Reich's political and military elements.  Up until the July bomb plot the military was largely left alone to fight the war within whatever stupid political paradigms Hitler imposed upon them.  For sure "political generals" existed, but they were anomalies and were largely isolated by the military to a large extent.  And even then, those generals did not necessarily squash German military traditions.  This made the Germans much harder to defeat than they otherwise would have been.

The Soviet Union went through a bit of a reversal.  After Stalin's fit of rage against the Army in 1941, he largely stopped removing and murdering his officers for things that were outside their control.  Somehow he came to realize that he'd run out of officers (again) if he kept it up.  And unlike the peacetime mass murder purge of officers, he probably figured there would be serious consequences if he did it.  As in Germans taking Moscow.

Maybe Putin will figure out, as Stalin did, that the military needs to be run by the military, not by political bullies.  If he does I doubt it it will matter due to the ticking clock.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So What?  Well this all adds up to what I think we are seeing now - more of the same from part I of this war, but louder.   I am still half convinced that this is all RA theatre and they have no intention of attempting a full on operation here, and this is posturing for the political audience.  However, I could very well be wrong and the RA is actually going to try to make a move, I guess next week will be interesting.  What is becoming clear is that the probability of outcomes is far more likely to mirror part 1 of the war; initial RA gains on the back of horrendous causalities and raw mass, and then the RA being unable to exploit or even hold those gains due in large part to heavy attrition and weak logistics. 

I'm also willing to admit to being wrong if it turns out Russia is able to suddenly conduct a large scale offensive without it falling apart.  Theoretically it could happen.  However, the most likely scenario is that their attack falters for one or more reasons and the breakthrough either never happens or melts soon after.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Primary reasons are consistent throughout this conflict:

- Russia brought the wrong military into this fight

- Russia applied the wrong doctrine and strategy to this fight

- Russia is insisting on continuing to fight the war they wanted, not the one they are in

- Russian Centers of Gravity: Stable government regime, Russian military able to sustain itself overtime, and protect its economy, are all being eroded.

- Ukraine CoGs of: sustain a will to resist, deny Russian successes, and sustain western support have been made stronger not weaker. 

- Russia seems unable to effect Ukrainian CoGs, or constrain their options spaces, while the exact opposite it true of the combination of western power and Ukrainian defence against Russian CoGs.

Did I miss anything?

Just one.

- Russia has to figure out some way either stop the flow of weapons into Ukraine because it has no way to counter it with its own production.

 

It's been a couple hundred pages since I've summed things up like this, but I think it can be boiled down to:

Russia -> has to do a bunch of really hard stuff it has shown almost no capacity to do, it has to do it soon, and it has to be enough to get Ukraine to surrender so they can keep it all.

Ukraine -> has to keep killing Russians until Russia isn't able to stay on Ukrainian soil.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

And this just stumbled upon.  According to Bellingcat's Christo Grozev, Putin has put himself in charge of the military:

 

[chuckdyke]

I read the German Campaign to take Kiev. More than a Million men they used for their assault. That was against a purged Soviet Army. Not hard to see where the Russians went wrong Kiev is a prime objective and not only because it is the capital. 

Edited April 24, 2022 by chuckdyke

[Battlefront.com]

A friend of mine pointed out that all the NATO artillery systems coming to Ukraine offer a lot of benefits over the Soviet era stuff Ukraine has (noted here already), but it also gives Ukraine more range than its current artillery offerings.  Some systems could, theoretically, hit Moscow.  Yeah, that's a fun thought but I don't think that will happen.

More practically, the longer range means that any Russian airbases within easy reach of Ukraine will be at risk of a Kherson type scattering event.  This will obligate Russia to move all air units back into Russia or Crimea, thus hampering air activities.  However, if Ukraine decides *any* Russian airbase to be "fair game" then the Russian airforce will be out of the war for all intents and purposes.

The problem is that Ukraine has to weigh attacks on Russian soil very carefully.  Putin has seemed rather eager to get the Russian people to think Ukraine is attacking them, and so far it's not worked.  Regularly attacking targets in Russia might tip things towards mobilization.

The interesting thing here is... I'm not sure pushing Putin to fully mobilize is a bad idea.  If, and this is a big if, doing so is going to cause a general upheaval within Russian society then by all means do it.  However, it could also solidify that Z = Zombie and the next thing Ukraine knows is there's hoards of braindead killers moving into Ukraine.  It's a tough call and I for one don't think any of us, including expert Putin watchers, have enough open sourced information to know which way it might go with any real degree of certainty.

Steve

[chuckdyke]

I find this a very good interview. We shouldn't see Russia as a water down version of the Soviet Union. It is a country with 150 million inhabitants and an unhealthy one. 

 

[dan/california]

If we really are finally giving the Ukrainians some missiles with 150 mile plus range it seems they should start with the logistics nodes that have been out of reach until now. As the Capn has said war is a form of communication. And breaking the Russian army's logistics in Ukraine is the best way to say "just leave now". If the Russians have been pushed back to 2/24 lines and are still blowing things up, that is when to start systematically wrecking airfields in Russia.

[Taranis]

"Russian military vehicles move through an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, April 23, 2022. ALEXEI ALEXANDROV / AP"

* military vehicles = T-64. So it's probably more separatist unit than russian

[kraze]

1 hour ago, chuckdyke said:

I find this a very good interview. We shouldn't see Russia as a water down version of the Soviet Union. It is a country with 150 million inhabitants and an unhealthy one. 

 

Because it's not. Russia is a hobo version of Nazi Germany.

[mosuri]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

And this just stumbled upon.  According to Bellingcat's Christo Grozev, Putin has put himself in charge of the military:

 

If this is true, hope it works out for him as well as it did to Nick the 2nd

[Elmar Bijlsma]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The interesting thing here is... I'm not sure pushing Putin to fully mobilize is a bad idea.  If, and this is a big if, doing so is going to cause a general upheaval within Russian society then by all means do it.  However, it could also solidify that Z = Zombie and the next thing Ukraine knows is there's hoards of braindead killers moving into Ukraine.  It's a tough call and I for one don't think any of us, including expert Putin watchers, have enough open sourced information to know which way it might go with any real degree of certainty.

Steve

Russia mobilizing would be interesting.

Sure, the extra manpower may be hard to handle for the Ukrainian military. But I think whomever is in charge of Russian logistics would be more scared of it than the Ukrainians.

[LongLeftFlank]

Take it or Galeev it.

I spent a lot of time with Wallerstein back in uni (also Luttwak and Mearsheimer, but that's a different story).

 

 

(as always, the rest of the thread is thought provoking and informative).

I am of the view that should:

a.  the Russian army suffer a huge and undeniable battlefield defeat that includes their near total expulsion from the areas invaded in Feb, plus the forced (televised) surrender of some large units;

b. that will trigger a Colour Revolution (with a fair bit of shooting, sadly) in Minsk, and the ascent of a Western-facing democratic regime in Belarus, harking back to the traditions of the Novgorod republic.

c.  At that point, I could readily see some of the Russian regions reasserting autonomy, with their own armed forces (private armies with loose official status).  My own picks would be:

(1) Kuban, the Russian 'sunbelt'. Krasnodar is the third largest city and an export hub. In the event Crimea does not rejoin Ukraine postwar, it would align itself with this region. The commercial culture there seems to have a more 'Southern European' feel to it (define that how you like, but it doesn't bode at all well for Moscow holding on to it).

(2) The old Novgorod republic -- the Volkhov lake country east of the Baltics that culturally has a lot in common with the Balts, perhaps more than with the 'Mosculs'....

(3) Most painful of all for Moscow, the Kursk-Bryansk-Belgorod-middle Volga heartland region could stand up and demand rights to form commercial ties across its western frontiers!  Would VDV units largely home based in Tula-Ryazan obey orders to suppress brother Russians in these oblasts? Or join them?

(4) Predictably, everything east and south of the Urals other than a few military base towns like Vladivostok will renegotiate its relationship with Moscow; governors will become billionaire-warlords with active Chinese connivance. Putin's Moscow-St Petersburg oligarchs will no longer be able to extract gigantic rents off resource flows and their power and patronage will wither. 

The economies of Old Muscovy are utterly hollow once you drive away the IT technorati (who are already quickly voting with their feet and would happily move to Krasnodar).  It's basically 35 million retirees, the very people who have been keenest on this stupid war. Let them rust and rot.

....Would this mean these autonomous republics areas become independent nations? Probably not at once, but the 'Russian Federation' would surely become a lot more 'Federation' and a lot less 'Russian'. 

But the iron fist of Moscow could at last be broken for good.

Edited April 24, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Monty's Mighty Moustache]

ISW update is up for yesterday for those that haven’t seen it: 

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-23

This part caught my attention and would appreciate insight from those with more knowledge and experience than I.

Quote

Russian forces from around Mariupol are redeploying to the vicinity of Donetsk City and are likely to enter combat again soon and without rest or refit

I find it curious that they are not being allowed to rest and refit. Could this be because there isn’t time? Or perhaps there are no forces and equipment available to refit them with? Or perhaps they aren’t that badly degraded? A combination of all three?

MMM

 

Edited April 24, 2022 by Monty's Mighty Moustache

[panzermartin]

Re: the Z mobilization. I think it might happen sooner or later. If Ukraine gets more and more arms, capable of hitting Russia or even Crimea, forces RuAf out etc, and there is a direct threat to the russian population with a (real) possibility of retaliatory ethnic cleansing in occupied territories we might see a dramatic Putin one day on TV addressing the nation. "Russia is under threat again like in WW2" "Our people are being killed by NATO weaponry" "Our only choice to stand up" etc. The possibilities of unrest are slim at the event of such "nation threatening" situation, with the state becoming more and more punishing and authoritarian. if we so far had no signs of significant part of population being against the initial invasion of 24Feb, I don't see how this will change under the barrel of a gun. When was the last time Russians rallied against a war (or anything for that matter ). 

But probably this won't happen before more dramatic events unfold, possibly escalation between China and AUKUS, the Solomon Islands was another step in that direction . We are unfortunately in a WW3 path and I would be surprised if there are no under the hood Russo-Chinese contacts...(But then I hope I'm being pessimistic again) 

 

[chuckdyke]

9 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

China and AUKUS,

Will be fought in PNG like WW2 and was it such a good idea to recognize communist China against the advice of the military at the time? 

[panzermartin]

And oh, BTW if China proves to be a worse monster than Russia (we are all seeing what's happening in Shanghai), Germanys energy sins with Russia, might seem tiny compared with the investment and dependence of West in chinese industry. 

It will be funny to see all those people blaming Germany through their 1300 USD Chinese made iPhone. 

[chuckdyke]

My pension scheme wouldn't have been possible without the iron ore trade with China. Sad but true it is a little bit more than a $1300 iPhone. 

[Huba]

3 hours ago, mosuri said:

If this is true, hope it works out for him as well as it did to Nick the 2nd

Or the Austrian Painter. It is getting grotesque.

Also what's that about 150miles missiles? Is HIMARS finally announced? I missed that bit somehow... 

Edited April 24, 2022 by Huba

[Armorgunner]

Is this the biggest thread in Battlefronts history, ever?

[LongLeftFlank]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/23/motivated-but-outgunned-ukrainian-soldiers-discuss-life-on-the-southern-front

Paints a slightly grimmer picture than the one we've mainly been discussing, albeit likely from a (hitherto) thinly manned portion of the front.

“They had three tanks on the hill and they were just shooting down at us. We just had rifles,” said Hennadiy. “We had some equipment that the Americans and Poles gave us, but it wasn’t enough to fight.”

Earlier that day, the group had avoided fire from a Russian plane. “A plane came over us and bombed us a little bit. It was a bit unpleasant,” said Serhiy, with a smile. “Well, actually, not a bit, utterly unpleasant.”

Another member of the group who escaped from the warehouse, Mykola, said the Russians had drones and knew exactly where their positions were.... 

New restrictions placed on movements of journalists south of Zaporizhzhia city seem to indicate that the situation on the southern front is worsening. According to soldiers interviewed by the Guardian, Ukrainian forces were pushed out of at least one of the three towns and villages an hour south of the city that the New York Times visited three weeks ago.

The military press secretary for Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Ariefiev, said journalists were not allowed to travel to those places now, but said that this was not because the situation on the front was worsening. He said the travel restrictions were because the active phase of the war on the southern front had begun.

Edited April 24, 2022 by LongLeftFlank