How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

 

[sburke]

24 minutes ago, billbindc said:

There's not a court in the country that would convict you. Seriously.

ha you'd have to be charged first and that is even less likely.

[Artkin]

Well this must be the first time in this country where you can order an international assassination for $2,000. On video too.

 

Does this now mean law and order is unacceptable between the current regime and the US? What does this mean politically if this website is never taken down? Originally we were supplying items in "defense".

 

It makes me think, we are kinda sorta at war with Russia now. Right? A website like that couldn't exist if it were any country other than Russia.

Edited September 1, 2022 by Artkin

[dan/california]

5 minutes ago, Artkin said:

Well this must be the first time in this country where you can order an international assassination for $2,000. On video too.

 

Does this now mean law and order is unacceptable between the current regime and the US? What does this mean politically if this website is never taken down? Originally we were supplying items in "defense".

 

It makes me think, we are kinda sorta at war with Russia now. Right? A website like that couldn't exist if it were any country other than Russia.

It means the Russians should go home now, today, while they still can.

 

[womble]

23 minutes ago, Artkin said:

Does this now mean law and order is unacceptable between the current regime and the US? What does this mean politically if this website is never taken down? Originally we were supplying items in "defense".

 

It's still defense while the ordnance is being lobbed at invading forces or their support echelons.

Not sure about the kill-porn part of it, but a portion of many countries' taxes (and therefore "our" taxes) are going towards weapons of war that will be used to kill and maim invaders. If we're okay with that, it's only a small step to volunteer more personal cash for the same thing. I think I'd rather take it on trust that the money is used as intended than be keen to have a video of its terminal effects.

 

[Huba]

Interesting. Zwastika suddenly lost it's appeal or is it a coordinated action? Or pwrhaps just unfounded Galeev's impression? Calling dr @Grigb

 

[Battlefront.com]

I don't think the staged "attack" on the nuke plant was for anybody other than domestic RU Nat consumption.  All day today I've been seeing and hearing nothing about it, including from the BBC highlights on the radio.  What I have heard is from the IAEA team leader on the ground there.  Not only are they at the plant, they are saying they aren't leaving.

If this "attack" was intended to preclude the IAEA from getting onsite, it failed.  If it was designed to get them to leave, it failed.

I don't know what the original intent of the false flag story was, but it looks like it was even less effective than Ukrainians eating children in 2014.  And that's saying something

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Okay, hold up.

Let's agree on some common descriptions and understandings. 

Can you clarify what you mean when you say total collapse? 

Is that societal,  military, regime, cultural,  scientific, what? 

I've been discussing these things since the war started.  At a minimum military and regime.  Depending on how the regime collapses will determine what happens to Russian society. 

I am a believer that Russia will see a decrease in its territory as an indirect result of this war.  There are several likely candidates, Chechnya being the one of the most likely.  Those who don't think it's even a possibility need to explain the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991 didn't in fact happen

5 hours ago, Kinophile said:

You're describing some fairly dramatic consequences for what is fundamentally an expeditionary campaign that has no real consequences for Russia as a national entity - its borders will still be secure, the police apparatus will still function,  food supply will still be sufficient and oil/gas will still flow. While some extremists might draw some kind of demented zig-zag line from the loss of Kherson to the fall of Russia, its a big ask to get the other 99.999% of Russian society to make that connection and arrive at similar conclusions, to one degree or another. Or any degree,  tbh. And sure, a revolution doesn't need 99% approval  (ebthe Bolshies probably had at best 30% support even within St. Petesberg /Moscow before the civil war). 

So, ok, there could be a change in which mafia gang claims the Kremlin but there's zero indications of anything that could lead to "collapse". 

Yesh.  We've had LOTS of discussion about this already.  But it boils down to this:

The war in Ukraine is a symptom of Russia's decline and Putin's inability to arrest it.  In fact, it is quite possible that the primary premise for the war was to buy the regime more time to exist.  The fact that it has failed so spectacularly means whatever it was intended to do won't happen, but a whole bunch of negative things Putin didn't count on are part of Russia's new reality.  Economic sanctions, enlargement of NATO, loss of political clout, loss of energy customers, loss of Western investors, likely loss of military customers, loss of decades worth of military production, another wave of brain drain, etc.

Many of these trends are not immediately reversible even with a favorable replacement of Putin's regime.  And a favorable replacement is not the most likely scenario.

Note I do not mention RU Nats above.  They are an agent for coming change at most, and even then they are only one of many agents.  I do not see them as being particularly important.  If they ceased to exist tomorrow, Russia would still be on the path towards collapse.  All they will do is make it messier and perhaps happen sooner than it otherwise would have.

5 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Big claims need big proof, and all that... 

Already discussed in detail more times than I can count.  Apparently you missed all of it?  Not interested in doing it yet again.  Even I'm getting tired of it and I'm the one that keeps bringing it up

Steve

[Huba]

Footage of UA drones used in Crimea attacks:

 

[LongLeftFlank]

3 hours ago, sburke said:

very funny response, but beware.  that's Hercules you are talking about!

 

[Huba]

2 hours ago, Haiduk said:

I don't know how reliable this information, but author claimed UKR destroyed pontoon bridge through Inhulets near Daryivka

Also about degradation of Russian AD in Kherson. Only on this direction for yesterday UKR aviation conducted 24 sorties (from 70 total). Interesting, that as far as month ago UKR aviation conducted maximum 20 for a day and usually 12-15.

It is WarMonitor, so a grain of salt is recommended, but very interesting if true. It would mean RU airdefence is seriously suppressed:

Edit: oh nvm, I thought he meant Kherson city (it was mentioned in subsequent tweet). 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Huba

[FancyCat]

Well, we know the TB2s got seriously impeded by Russian AD, Ukraine admitted it unofficially? several times, so the fact that the TB2 seems to be spinning back up, could be morale boosting effort, or legitimately SEAD attacks are degrading Russian ability to operate AD. 

Also, Kherson vs Kherson oblast, could be attacks throughout the province vs the city itself. 

[Kinophile]

@Battlefront.com possibly I've missed a bunch during my involuntary hiatus >:/

Still, I do hear your trends view,  and understand what you're looking for, and that you see many danger signs for the regime in its current format. I even agree with all your highlighting of the various indications. 

My quibble (because this is an online forum and none of means anything, so a "quibble" is all it deserves to be called; I'm not married to this discussion >:D ) is the conflation of a  Russian,  big C, Collapse, as social/cultural entity with the implosion of Putin's Regime as a governing system. I personally don't see the two inextricably linked. I think Russia could lose a bunch, thousands of Putinistas, go through a major political purge and still come nowhere near Collapse as a society,or even militarily. 

The Army In Ukraine could collapse tomorrow, in-theatre,  yet the moment it's across the border it can stop and rebuild. So it'll never cease to be, as a fighting force. All external, direct violent pressure against it will cease.  It'll still be fed,  watered and supplied as normal and the troops will still be paid.  It can also get rid of a lot of unhappy/unwilling personnel and if necessary, it can turn against internal "foes".  So it wont be under the needed pressure to make it collapse. The collapse will be operationally limited and geographically restricted. So it'll be temporaryin both space and time. 

If you take away military collapse, that leaves regime change. Which is very hard without a degraded or internally riven Military. Even then, it could be more a changing of faces rather than a destruction of the existing order.  Public show trials will hell remind everyone who's now in charge.

Of course, If Putin tries to keep the War in Ukraine going Ge risks his personal health and the health of his immediate circle, plus dependents, but the system itself can still change and function with a Putin 2.0. The Tzar is dead,  long live the Tzar,  etc 

So,lots of indications of internal political drama, but I'm personally not buying "Collapse" as a reasonable descriptor for the end state 1 year or more from now. 

But that's just me :). 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Kinophile

[sburke]

14 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

@Battlefront.comIt'll still be fed,  watered and supplied as normal and the troops will still be paid.

There seems to be some question about how well they are accomplishing that now.   Especially the paid part.  

[Kinophile]

16 minutes ago, sburke said:

There seems to be some question about how well they are accomplishing that now.   Especially the paid part.  

But that goes to my point - remove the army from Ukraine, forcibly or voluntarily and it can restore itself.  Keep there and it'll collapse, get ejected and again,  start to restore itself. 

Either way,  the border will never be crossed by an external enemy. There's no WW1 German army pushing incessantly towards the capital. So the evaporation of pressure on the RU armed forces is inevitable,in one way or another. 

The pressure on Putins regime is another, but hey, that's what fabricated charges and mass arrests are for. It's not like the Gulag Archipelago can't be rebuilt.... 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Kinophile

[chuckdyke]

I like this guy, who I find objective. It is hard to decide who to follow on You Tube.

 

[acrashb]

1 hour ago, Artkin said:

Well this must be the first time in this country where you can order an international assassination for $2,000

It does raise some interesting ethical and perhaps legal issues - all of which I'm comfortable with - but it is not an 'assassination'.  There is a difference between this and war bonds, but I think not material.  It (sponsoring a grenade and seeing the people it attacks) does strike me as bloodthirsty, but there is some latitude for this.  Perhaps we should consult Chidi?  Although the war could be over by the time he opines
 

[Calamine Waffles]

1 hour ago, chuckdyke said:

I like this guy, who I find objective. It is hard to decide who to follow on You Tube.

 

He's good for a news summary, but the problem as I've mentioned before in this forum is that he's not a military person or expert (he's an airline pilot), so take his military analysis with some salt.

Good presentation on UASes at war
 

 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Calamine Waffles

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

@Battlefront.com possibly I've missed a bunch during my involuntary hiatus >:/

Still, I do hear your trends view,  and understand what you're looking for, and that you see many danger signs for the regime in its current format. I even agree with all your highlighting of the various indications. 

My quibble (because this is an online forum and none of means anything, so a "quibble" is all it deserves to be called; I'm not married to this discussion >:D ) is the conflation of a  Russian,  big C, Collapse, as social/cultural entity with the implosion of Putin's Regime as a governing system. I personally don't see the two inextricably linked. I think Russia could lose a bunch, thousands of Putinistas, go through a major political purge and still come nowhere near Collapse as a society,or even militarily. 

For sure it is possible, but Putin has been creating fewer options for himself and that means, by extension, Russia.

As I said, my primary use of "collapse" is in the political and military sense.  Societal and territorial "collapse" is more-or-less dependent upon the details of the political collapse.  Russia has two recent and very different collapses to study.

The 1917 collapse resulted in a catastrophic failure of pretty much everything.  It was nasty to an extreme.

The 1990/1991 collapse was traumatic and consequential, but the core of the Soviet state survived and then reestablished itself.  Tens of thousands of people died through internal conflicts, probably as many died from neglect during institutional crisis.

Russia is headed into this sort of territory again, in part because Putin has not only recreated much of the old Soviet state, but he's also recreated the conditions that caused it's collapse.  In fact, I'd say Russia to day is in worse shape than the Soviet Union of the late 1980s.

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

The Army In Ukraine could collapse tomorrow, in-theatre,  yet the moment it's across the border it can stop and rebuild.

Sure, just like the Germany rebuilt the Bundeswehr from the Wehrmacht.  But there kinda was an important bit of history that happened between the two, right?  Hint... it collapsed.  Therefore, rebuilding is a separate issue from collapse.  Russia's military is headed towards collapse.  Whether or how it rebuilds itself is not relevant.

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

So it'll never cease to be, as a fighting force. All external, direct violent pressure against it will cease.  It'll still be fed,  watered and supplied as normal and the troops will still be paid. 

This is a presumption which, I think, needs to be scrutinized more.  There's already issues with Russia not paying its soldiers.

One of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was it's military spending was out of proportion to its ability to sustain it.  This is exactly what happened to Russia's military and it will be, in no small way, a reason for Putin's regime to collapse.

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

If you take away military collapse, that leaves regime change. Which is very hard without a degraded or internally riven Military. Even then, it could be more a changing of faces rather than a destruction of the existing order.  Public show trials will hell remind everyone who's now in charge.

Of course, If Putin tries to keep the War in Ukraine going Ge risks his personal health and the health of his immediate circle, plus dependents, but the system itself can still change and function with a Putin 2.0. The Tzar is dead,  long live the Tzar,  etc 

This is a huge discussion we've covered in great detail already.  While there are a number of opinions about the details, there appears to be a consensus that the most likely scenario is that Putin is deposed as part of a coup and replaced by someone probably nastier than he is.  Then we get into all kinds of other scenarios.

The primary disagreement is over when the coup might happen, who might make it happen, and how likely it is to succeed.  Scan back to this page and you'll get a gist of that discussion:

It goes back even further.  There's about two dozen posts about the coup stuff just from that point on.

 

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

So,lots of indications of internal political drama, but I'm personally not buying "Collapse" as a reasonable descriptor for the end state 1 year or more from now. 

But that's just me :). 

Collapse as defined by one of the many online dictionaries:

• To fall down or inward suddenly; cave in.
• To break down suddenly in strength or health and thereby cease to function.

That's absolutely what I expect to happen to Putin's regime and to Russia's military.  Much sooner than 1 year too

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

ISW's report from yesterday (not released until early this morning AFAIK) had this rather unusual start.  For those a bit unsure of how to interpret Russian messaging without much from Ukraine or the West, here's something to sink your teeth into:

Ukrainians and the West should not fall for Russian information operations portraying the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast as having failed almost instantly or that depict Ukraine as a helpless puppet of Western masters for launching it at this time. The Russian Ministry of Defense began conducting an information operation to present Ukraine’s counteroffensive as decisively failed almost as soon as it was announced on August 29.[1] Several prominent military bloggers—even bloggers who have historically been critical of the Kremlin—are promoting this message.[2] Other milbloggers are additionally promoting the narrative that Ukraine’s Western handlers pushed Ukraine to launch the counteroffensive prematurely and/or too late for “political” reasons and because the West expected a counteroffensive.[3] Kremlin media outlets have also centrally amplified allegations of civil-military conflict between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi to bolster the narrative that Zelensky sought to conduct a counteroffensive for inappropriate political reasons whereas Zaluzhnyi assessed Ukrainian forces were not militarily prepared to do so.[4]

Military operations on the scale of this counteroffensive do not succeed or fail in a day or a week. Ukrainian officials have long acknowledged that they do not have the sheer mass of mechanized forces that would have been needed to conduct a blitzkrieg-like drive to destroy the Russian defenses in Kherson Oblast or anywhere. They have instead been setting conditions for months by attacking and disrupting Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs), Russian command and control, and Russian logistics systems throughout southwestern occupied Ukraine. The timing of the start of the counteroffensive is consistent with the observed degradation of Russian capabilities in western Kherson Oblast balanced against the need to start liberating occupied Ukrainian lands and people as soon as possible. There is no reason to suspect that the timing has been materially influenced by inappropriate considerations or tensions. Counteroffensive operations now underway will very likely unfold over the coming weeks and possibly months as Ukrainian forces take advantage of the conditions they have set to defeat particular sectors of the line they have identified as vulnerable while working to retake their cities and towns without destroying them in the process. 

Military forces that must conduct offensive operations without the numerical advantages normally required for success in such operations often rely on misdirections and feints to draw the defender away from the sectors of the line on which breakthrough and exploitation efforts will focus. The art of such feints is two-fold. First, they must be conducted with sufficient force to be believable. Since they are feints, however, rather than deliberate attacks expected to succeed, they often look like failures—the attacking units will fall back when they feel they have persuaded the defender of their seriousness. Second, they take time to have an effect. When the purpose of the feint is to draw the defender’s forces away from the intended breakthrough sectors, the attacker must wait until the defender has actually moved forces. There will thus likely be a delay between the initial feint operations and the start of decisive operations. The situation during that delay may well look like the attack has failed.

The Ukrainian military and government are repeating requests to avoid any reporting or forecasting of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, a measure that is essential if the counteroffensive includes feints or misdirections.[5] It is of course possible that the counteroffensive will fail, that any particular breakthrough attempt that fails was not a feint, or that the Ukrainian military has made some error in planning, timing, or execution that will undermine the success of its operations. But the situation in which Ukraine finds itself calls for a shrewd and nuanced counteroffensive operation with considerable misdirection and careful and controlled advances. It is far more likely in these very early days, therefore, that a successful counteroffensive would appear to be stalling or unsuccessful for some time before its success became manifest. 

ISW and other analysts studying this war have been appropriately cautious and circumspect in announcing the culmination or defeat of major Russian offensive operations.  ISW will apply the same caution and circumspection to assessing the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and exhorts others to do the same.

[Battlefront.com]

My only snarky quibble with the above ISW statement is this:

"Military operations on the scale of this counteroffensive do not succeed or fail in a day or a week."

It should read:

"Military operations on the scale of this counteroffensive do not succeed or fail in a day or a week, unless it is conducted by Russia."

In all seriousness, I felt I had enough information 3 days into this war to know that Russia was going to lose it.  I also correctly called the failure of the Easter offensive within a few days (3-4 IIRC).  However, the reason for that is the quality of information coming out of Ukraine and from the West.  Generally speaking, it was of sufficient quality and quantity to reasonably draw some conclusions about prospects for success well before the operations concluded.  That information is deliberately (and correctly) being withheld from us.  So it's difficult to assess what's going on, though for sure I have my opinions based on pre-counterattack state.

Steve

[chuckdyke]

I see Russia as an out-of-control airliner with the pilot suddenly gone nuts. Hopefully it has a retired pilot onboard, oh wait that one just died of old age. One of the passengers could be guided to land with some help. Nobody is helped if it crashes on one of our cities. Our ideal situation would be Russia withdraws from Ukraine and pays Ukraine for all the damage it caused. I am not holding my breath. 

 

[JonS]

31 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

It is far more likely in these very early days, therefore, that a successful counteroffensive would appear to be stalling or unsuccessful for some time before its success became manifest. 

Op COBRA stands out as a conanical example here - the first couple of days looked like, well, maybe not "failure", in absolute terms, but re-emergent stalemate and the failure of the hopes that had been laid on it by the buildup and extraordinary expenditure of resources.

Then suddenly, on day 3, hey ho we're off to the races.

Edit: and, of course, exactly the same dynamic - on different timescales - played out over the Normandy campaign writ large, and also at el Alamein in Oct-Nov '42.

Edited September 2, 2022 by JonS

[BletchleyGeek]

27 minutes ago, JonS said:

Op COBRA stands out as a conanical example here - the first couple of days looked like, well, maybe not "failure", in absolute terms, but re-emergent stalemate and the failure of the hopes that had been laid on it by the buildup and extraordinary expenditure of resources.

Then suddenly, on day 3, hey ho we're off to the races.

As a wargaming aside, very few games capture this well.  The one thing John Tiller's Panzer Campaigns does best - with its 2 hour per turn - is to capture this... the challenge is go through the ~36 turns of grim slogging out until, as you say, we're off to the races (or one gives up). Flashpoint Campaigns is also quite good (and covering a modern era conflict with ATGMs, high lethality counterbattery artillery fires, etc.).

Edited September 2, 2022 by BletchleyGeek

[fireship4]

35 minutes ago, JonS said:

conanical example

You have summoned me once again, this thread is no place for the bearer of the jeweled crown of Aquilonia!