How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[c3k]

Crimea and Donbas

 

These territories were seized by Russia and then the population (especially Crimea) shifted by importing Russians. (This is why borders matter.)

Now, if Ukraine regained these territories, there is nothing to prevent them from copying Russia: allowing Ukrainians to flood in while allowing Russian separatists to go to Russia. 

Russia had 8 years to tilt the demographics. Let's do a poll of the territories 8 years after Ukraine regains their rightful borders. I'll bet it'll be pretty pro-Ukrainian.

 

Land is NOT people.  The one is immutable, the other is mobile and moldable.

[Calamine Waffles]

NATO cannot accept any other goal then total defeat of the Russian Army in Ukraine. Anything less than that means there will be a "next time", and when that happens, it may not be restricted to just Ukraine alone.

[LongLeftFlank]

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-128-mission-command-natos?s=r

Worthy piece from Adam Tooze tracing the diffusion of Auftragstaktik from the Wehrmacht via the Bundeswehr to the US Army and its subsequent adoption by the Ukrainians and, as Tooze does well, ruminating on the wider implications: e.g., is there a 'Western Way of War?'

I knew about Mellinthin and Halder but didn't know about Balck's involvement with de Puy.

Auftragstaktik, mission command, was the gothic scissors that cut through the threads that suspended the American fighting-man like a puppet from the dead hand of Mcnamara’s Pentagon.... 

If Ukraine’s forces really are influenced by the “mission command” model they have learned from NATO this is in fact the first time it is being put to the test against the original intended enemy and in the kind of life-or-death battle that NATO envisioned in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Edited June 13, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

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.

This is big exaggregation. As told Zeleban many of locals are indifferent. They are also passive. They are not so much pro-Russians, like Soviet-nostalgy. Somebody said "Russia seized Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk not beacuse the majority of locals were pro-Russian, but because it didn't care". Many of pro-Ukrainain people couldn't leave occupied territories by many reasons. Especially in Crimea, when real number of referendum participators was about 35%. Many of that information, which I post here from occupied territories is information from local social networks users, which with risk to their lives continue to write about situation. And some of them already arrested by LDPR "security".  

Real example of indifference of Donetsk citizen - this story of 2015. The owner of car-service in May 2014 told to his friend, which suggest him evacuate togeter to Kyiv and move business to there: "I don't care who's flag will be over the city. All will be need in my service here. I got my income in hryvnas, but If Russians come - nothing will change for me, thay just will pay me in rubles. If Americans come - they will pay me in dollars. Even if Chineese come, I will get money anyway, but in yuans". But since some month to his car-service came DPR fighters fron some Russian Caucasian repuplic and told him "Now it's our business, go fu...k away"

Edited June 13, 2022 by Haiduk

[Centurian52]

On 6/9/2022 at 9:57 AM, Beleg85 said:

Perhaps what is happening in Ukraine now is very specific to this conflict only and we should not draw wider conclusions about nature of future warfare. Especially we lack proper sources and our knowledge is very fragmentary.

I think we can make some generalizations and conclusions. But I think you are right in that we should be careful about what generalizations we make, and how confident we are in the generalizations we do make. This is a decent sized war that should provide a decent sample size of battles and engagements from which to draw conclusions. But there are some limitations, and things that we haven't seen a whole lot of. Russia's ability to make effective use of combined arms is severely hampered by their shortage of infantry, meaning we have a limited number of engagements to observe in which effective combined arms forces met effective combined arms forces. Our observations of air warfare are limited by the low number of Ukrainian airframes. Also, I suspect there may just be a certain amount of variation from war to war (differences in terrain, climate, force density, force structures/doctrine of the opposing sides, different plans being put into action, varying levels of competence among commanders, etc...), even among wars fought at the roughly same time with roughly the same technology (look at how much variation there was between different fronts and campaigns just in WW2).

The next war will certainly be very different in a lot of ways. But when we see in what ways it is the same, then we can start drawing some fairly confident conclusions about the nature of modern war. Admittedly of course, while it would be great for military science, all else considered it would probably be best if that next war doesn't happen.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Centurian52

[slysniper]

 

Here is a good example of what  might happen to armoured warfare,

or the death of the tank as we know it.

 

A small platform with weaponry that can be controlled by remote 

Once you can build things like this for much less than a tank but have them provide the fire power similar to a tank.

Without a crew that needs to be directly exposed with the weapon to threats.

 

How in the world is it not going to remove tanks from the battlefield as we think of them presently.

 

 

[The_MonkeyKing]

https://warontherocks.com/2022/06/the-most-dangerous-phase-for-ukraine/

bleaker 20min for a change. 

some picks:
- Ukraine has to transition to western arms (for example 152mm/122mm  is going to run out at some point)
- a lot depends on the level of the western support
- a lot depends on the UKR ability to absorb the western aid. Especially keeping the new systems in the field (maintenance)
- Russia might very well see itself winning and the time being on its side
- This war had two parts. The regime change part and the current part. Now Russians are fighting more like we thought they would (EW, massed fires, drones).
- Ukraine has huge challenges with attrition, ammo and best troops big part gone
- War is now defined by artillery fires and attrition. Neither side has the capacity for breakthroughs maneuver warfare.

Kofman still sees UKR as "winning" but facing big challenges and any hope for fast collapse of the Russian military and kicking the Russians out anytime soon is wishful thinking. Much if not everything depends on the level of the western support.

[Huba]

7 minutes ago, slysniper said:

 

Here is a good example of what  might happen to armoured warfare,

or the death of the tank as we know it.

 

A small platform with weaponry that can be controlled by remote 

Once you can build things like this for much less than a tank but have them provide the fire power similar to a tank.

Without a crew that needs to be directly exposed with the weapon to threats.

 

How in the world is it not going to remove tanks from the battlefield as we think of them presently.

 

 

Unless those are autonomous, terrain limiting LOS plus heavy EW comes to mind - it's so much harder to overcome this in UGVs than in UAVs.

In other news, we can expect good news (even better than expected due to Moldova being also included in the process):

 

[The_MonkeyKing]

and on the Russia news they are cannibalizing's the rest of their combat generation power:

Koffman also mentions this. They are likely to crimple their combat power generation for a long time by sending the training manpower and equipment to Ukraine.

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Kofman still sees UKR as "winning" but facing big challenges and any hope for fast collapse of the Russian military and kicking the Russians out anytime soon is wishful thinking.

Well based on Kofman's track record I am starting to lean towards Steve's thinking, Russian collapse sooner than later.

[Centurian52]

On 6/9/2022 at 10:38 AM, panzermartin said:

I don't consider myself the most pro russian guy but I can see why Russia feels threatened. Its not irrational, lets be honest.

On paper NATO is a defensive organization but its members have conducted and have been involved in the most wars and invasions since the end of WW2. Mainly US. NATO offcially has also intervened violently, bombing in the Balkans, Libya and waged war on Afghanistan for 20 years. So not a strictly defensive pact per se. The other most important member of NATO, (once Great) Britain, has been a colonial force for centuries, occupying and looting countries at will, and only recently has withdrawn from most of its distant colonized lands. Not a great record to be honest. France is not lagging that far behind on that matter and Germany has the most dark recent past of all of them and a special wound with Russia. So, yes not that aggressive anymore, but not a great criminal record if you want them for neighbours.   

US, the flagship and mastermind of NATO,  has bypassed UN council to invade sovereign states like Iraq with false pretext of WMD and has 750 military bases around the globe, thousands of miles beyond its borders. Its military spending is 10x times more than the second on the list. An alien observer coming from space would argue that these guys with the stars and stripes are everywhere, how can they complain of expansionism of others?   Russia is not nervous of NATO but of US army presence so close to its vital routes. Imagine a US base in Sevastopol (again distance from home:  

https://www.google.com/search?q=sevastopol+distance+from+US&oq=sevastopol+distance+from+US&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.9435j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 )

completly blocking Russia way out to Bosporus and Mediterranean Sea. 

In this story Russians might seem the bad guys and we would probably not want to see them reaching the polish borders but from their POV and as an entity , they have probably sound reasons to not want NATO(US) presence that close to their home. This regardless of what we feel is moral or not.    

 

You make some fair points. The issue is that these actions were done by (admittedly prominent) individual NATO members, not NATO as a whole. Individual NATO members can fight all the wars of aggression they want without invoking the alliance and bringing in the rest of NATO. But the alliance can only be invoked for a defensive war. A war of aggression by the whole alliance would actually become significantly less likely the larger the alliance grows, since it would certainly require unanimous agreement among the member states (any states that didn't agree could simply refuse to send forces). NATO is simply not politically united enough to wage a war of aggression.

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

and on the Russia news they are cannibalizing's the rest of their combat generation power:

Koffman also mentions this. They are likely to crimple their combat power generation for a long time by sending the training manpower and equipment to Ukraine.

We call this "auto-cannibalizations" and it is the last gasp of any professional military.  If this is true and widespread, particularly if they start to pull people out of their training system, then Russia is really throwing it all in an a final gambit.

This war is interesting as this entire last phase has been the Russians figuring out what losing looks like, while Ukraine tries to figure out what winning looks like.

[The_MonkeyKing]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well based on Kofman's track record I am starting to lean towards Steve's thinking, Russian collapse sooner than later.

I have the same leaning but I am not counting out that Kofman was right when he said (and still says) it is too early to tell the outcome from the first couple of weeks/months and this might indeed turn into a stalemate with western resolve cracking and Ukraine turning to economical stone age with any sort of close to current state ceasefire.

[FancyCat]

40 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

This is big exaggregation. As told Zeleban many of locals are indifferent. They are also passive. They are not so much pro-Russians, like Soviet-nostalgy. Somebody said "Russia seized Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk not beacuse the majority of locals were pro-Russian, but because it didn't care". Many of pro-Ukrainain people couldn't leave occupied territories by many reasons. Especially in Crimea, when real number of referendum participators was about 35%. Many of that information, which I post here from occupied territories is information from local social networks users, which with risk to their lives continue to write about situation. And some of them already arrested by LDPR "security".  

Real example of indifference of Donetsk citizen - this story of 2015. The owner of car-service in May 2014 told to his friend, which suggest him evacuate togeter to Kyiv and move business to there: "I don't care who's flag will be over the city. All will be need in my service here. I got my income in hryvnas, but If Russians come - nothing will change for me, thay just will pay me in rubles. If Americans come - they will pay me in dollars. Even if Chineese come, I will get money anyway, but in yuans". But since some month to his car-service came DPR fighters fron some Russian Caucasian repuplic and told him "Now it's our business, go fu...k away"

Thank you for correcting me. 

So he lost his business? What happened to him since then? 

[Calamine Waffles]

11 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

I have the same leaning but I am not counting out that Kofman was right when he said (and still says) it is too early to tell the outcome from the first couple of weeks/months and this might indeed turn into a stalemate with western resolve cracking and Ukraine turning to economical stone age with any sort of close to current state ceasefire.

I find that highly unlikely unless the people leading NATO are incredibly short-sighted. They lose a valuable ally in Ukraine *and* almost certainly guarantee that there will be a NATO-Russia war in the near future.

[Huba]

1 minute ago, FancyCat said:

Thank you for correcting me. 

So he lost his business? What happened to him since then? 

This sounds like the old Italian guy from "Catch 22" who first was a monarchist, then a fascist, a nazi for a moment, currently a democrat/ capitalist, but expected to be a communist in the future. Physical survival is the most basic human need after all...

[The_Capt]

14 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

I have the same leaning but I am not counting out that Kofman was right when he said (and still says) it is too early to tell the outcome from the first couple of weeks/months and this might indeed turn into a stalemate with western resolve cracking and Ukraine turning to economical stone age with any sort of close to current state ceasefire.

And that would entirely be on us in the West.  If we do crack and fold, well we deserve what happens next and maybe we should not be holding the pen that writes the global order. 

We (the West) are the military industrial complex for the Ukraine - we committed to that pretty early on.  Ukraine has demonstrated that they will fight, we need to demonstrate that we will back them until the job is done. 

I am not sure how potentially losing a tiny berg in the Donbas is somehow shaking everyone's resolve.  I swear the online tone is as jumpy as the prettiest goat at an Afghan barn orgy right now.  "Oh no, we have lost Severdonetsk!  The war is lost!!"  Why? Because the Russians actually managed to get a very costly tactical win?  A win that is unlikely to go anywhere?

The UA is collapsing!!!!  Really?  Where is that coming from?  Based on Russian rates of advance, we in the west have clearly forgotten what an operational collapse actually looks like, which is really weird as we just saw the Russians do one in March.  Ukraine is hurting right now but there is a whole lotta country besides the Donbas and for every day the Russians are burning resources, Ukraine has an opportunity to make more.

We, in the West, are either in this to win it - which includes, at least: continuing to backstop UA force generation, building/funding a Ukraine internal military industrial complex for a long war and re-construction of the country after this is all over.  Hell we did this in spades in Afghanistan...FFS!  And the global stakes are orders of magnitude higher in this war than that "interesting adventure".

Or we get ready to accept that we have pissed away billions, fracture and withdraw support, and live what happens next.

There is no "easy out", or hedge fund strategy here...this is war.  You do not take the Last Argument of Kings option lightly and to steal from Stephen King, we will have forgotten the faces of our fathers if we fail on this one.

[Centurian52]

On 6/9/2022 at 1:20 PM, Butschi said:

I agree. But that logic is only valid while both sides are acting rationally. During the Cold War both sides were actually fairly rational players. Because, as you say, both sides would have been annihilated and so had nothing to gain by escalating. I just doubt the assumption that both sides will act rational under all circumstances. Or that what we think is rational is not all that rational from Putins point of view. Hell, almost everyone here thought it was totally irrational to start this war in the first place.

I think the difference is that in the case of this war, while we all knew that invading Ukraine would be a completely irrational thing to do, anyone who had studied military history could look at the Russian build up and say "this is what the prelude to an invasion looks like". I was as wrong as wrong could be about what the course of the war would be, but I correctly called that the war would happen.

Both invading Ukraine and starting a nuclear war are totally irrational things to do. Putin invaded Ukraine anyway, demonstrating that just because it is irrational doesn't mean he won't do it. But, unlike with the invasion of Ukraine, the signs that Putin is preparing to start a nuclear war just aren't there. With Ukraine there was rhetoric and visible preparation. With nuclear war there is only rhetoric and no signs of any preparation.

[Haiduk]

2 hours ago, Huba said:

how do you imagine incorporating those back to the core? Crimea is full of ethnic Russians at the moment as far as I can tell, and people from LDPR, while probably disenchanted by Russia, are more or less willingly actively fighting you at the moment. I imagine there will be A LOT of bad blood between you. I assume that has to be discussed a lot in Ukraine, so what are your takes on it?

We had pre-war re-integration law project, which also was a case for Russia to blame Ukraine in plans of "military resolve of Donbas question", though this plan never said about it. But now reality is completely other and re-integration will be conducted in more tough way. Looking at resistance/SOF actions in Melitopol, Kherson, Luhansk oblast, we will not stop even before phisical elmination of collaborants during occupation and in liibaration process, those who now became "city mayors", "oblast administrations", "police" etc. Voices of HRW will be no more interest. I hope all, who met occupants will have a time to leave with them to their beloved Russia. All other must be condemned according to passed law about collaborationiosm. After 2014 almost all officials, those, who agitate for LDPR and stayed on UKR-controlled territories, were not punished and this also played own role in significant pro-Russian moods even on Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbas. 

Russians, who came to Crimea for living will go away. Some of them wrote before a war, that even if UKR take back Crimea it will be forced to give them UKR citizenship (and all cherry on tops, like visa-free trips), because in other case this will be violation of human rights. No-o-oo, pals. Don't even dare to dream about this. Also we must to establish "non-citizen" passports like in Baltic states. All who was convicted in unloyality to Ukraine or was condemned for collaborationism must receive such passport.

There is a movie "Atlantis" was produced in Ukraine in 2019 about problems, which will raise after liberation of Donbas 
   

[Centurian52]

On 6/9/2022 at 1:39 PM, CHEqTRO said:

Considering they still desire to be a great power, and they have all the right to desire so

They have a right to desire whatever they want. They do not have a right to do whatever they want in order to actualize that desire. They are allowed to want to be a great power. They are not allowed to invade a sovereign country to make that happen.

[Haiduk]

18 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Thank you for correcting me. 

So he lost his business? What happened to him since then? 

He escaped to UKR-controlled territory. I can say also that not only pro-Ukrainian people flee frpm occupied territories - both since 2014 and now. Many of "vata" go to Kyiv, western Ukraine, Poland. They continue to hate Ukraine, but don't want to go to Russia. Maybe because true Russian patriots always prefer to love "ideal Russia" on the distance from its terrible reality 

[Huba]

17 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

The UA is collapsing!!!!  Really?  Where is that coming from?  Based on Russian rates of advance, we in the west have clearly forgotten what an operational collapse actually looks like, which is really weird as we just saw the Russians do one in March.  Ukraine is hurting right now but there is a whole lotta country besides the Donbas and for every day the Russians are burning resources, Ukraine has an opportunity to make more.

To a large degree, this is caused by the tone of official UA communication - screaming bloody murder and calling for more weapons. It has quite a rallying impact on Western societies I think, but overdone entices defeatist thinking. Balancing that is not easy from communication management perspective. 

The most basic message being send by UA now is "we need more guns now!". Saying that RU overmatches them 20:1 adds dramatic effect, but it's at least to a degree a PSYOP aimed at the West. When you look at UA General Staff updates, or what Reznikov says, the message is much more balanced and not panicky at all.

Edit: oh, and of course can't disagree with the notion that it is in fact West's war to win. Ukraine has proven its will to fight beyond any doubt, but it's our job to enable them to win.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Huba

[Aragorn2002]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-128-mission-command-natos?s=r

Worthy piece from Adam Tooze tracing the diffusion of Auftragstaktik from the Wehrmacht via the Bundeswehr to the US Army and its subsequent adoption by the Ukrainians and, as Tooze does well, ruminating on the wider implications: e.g., is there a 'Western Way of War?'

I knew about Mellinthin and Halder but didn't know about Balck's involvement with de Puy.

Auftragstaktik, mission command, was the gothic scissors that cut through the threads that suspended the American fighting-man like a puppet from the dead hand of Mcnamara’s Pentagon.... 

If Ukraine’s forces really are influenced by the “mission command” model they have learned from NATO this is in fact the first time it is being put to the test against the original intended enemy and in the kind of life-or-death battle that NATO envisioned in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Fascinating reading. First time I've read about plans for a NATO  counteroffensive aimed at East Germany in case of a Soviet attack against the West.

' Viewed in these terms Auftragstaktik, mission command, was nothing less than the expression of the inner spirit of Western culture in military form. ' According to Balck. 

Edited June 13, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[Centurian52]

On 6/9/2022 at 2:44 PM, Battlefront.com said:

Always remember, just because you don't see something doesn't mean it isn't there.

That is some signature line material

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, Huba said:

To a large degree, this is caused by the tone of official UA communication - screaming bloody murder and calling for more weapons. It has quite a rallying impact on Western societies I think, but overdone entices defeatist thinking. Balancing that is not easy from communication management perspective. 

The most basic message being send by UA now is "we need more guns now!". Saying that RU overmatches them 20:1 adds dramatic effect, but it's at least to a degree a PSYOP aimed at the West. When you look at UA General Staff updates, or what Reznikov says, the message is much more balanced and not panicky at all.

 

Well given the Ukrainian political levels mastery of the narrative, I think we can forgive them for a small communications mis-step.  What is shocking is just how nervous the West is right now.  Everyone remember these infographics from before the war?

We went through this in the initial phases of the war, all waiting for the "inevitable defeat of Ukraine" and then it totally went the other way.  Now it is almost like there is a push to re-affirm a pre-conceived reality of "Ukraine losing" at the slightest hint of a tactical set-back.