How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

I can't help but think that this looks a lot like a government that's phoning it in because there's nothing much in the way of direction from the top. Something's up with Putin either cognitively or in terms of his power to direct the state. It's that simple. 

I am also quite puzzled by this.  I had always credited Putin with being a details man, especially when it came to manipulating people.  Why he spent 6 months in terror of mobilizing a reluctant population and then all of a sudden he doesn't seem to care one iota how angry they get.  This doesn't make sense, even if we go with my theory that the military situation is so bad that throwing untrained bodies into the front is the only hope he has.  Why?  Because he could have imposed vastly more order on the callups if he had wanted to.

My guess is that he is fairly clueless about how inept his underlings are.  He certainly didn't seem to know he didn't have a functional military before the war started.  He thought he had good intel services.  Why not also think that his conscription system is up to the task?

Someone knowledgeable did a good piece on the practical problems with Russian mass mobilization.  Dunno if it had been linked here or if I stumbled upon it (ISW for sure spoke to many of the problems).  Basically, Russia doesn't have a mass mobilization system in place.  Instead there is a peacetime system designed to handle about 125k intake over a period of, IIRC, 2 months.  Now he wants that same system to grab 300,000 in a matter of days.  Yeah, not going to happen.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

14 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

 

Ahem, BF. Seeeee my ATGMers CAN spot and shoot from prone in tall grass... 

That's not Tall Grass

Steve

[FancyCat]

The rise in energy costs and associated inflation affects the U.S more than any revenue from more expensive exports of gas would cover. As for the video of Nuland, in 2021, the U.S would actually withdraw sanctions and let the pipeline go forward, we know now following the invasion, that the U.S, being aware of the potential invasion, and lining up a united front, asked Germany to let the pipeline go on the chopping block, which Germany agreed in the event of war, believing Russia was bluffing, and seeing the opportunity to finally get the pipeline underway.

in hindsight, it was one of the most beneficial foreign policy decisions by the Biden administration, ensuring a united NATO alliance, allowing France and Germany to seek out negotiations, and when Russia invaded, ensured sanctions would be very tough.

[Battlefront.com]

I like this guy's maps.  Totally old school   They do seem to be reasonably accurate (leaning towards conservative), though of course easily outdated by events.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Just now, FancyCat said:

The rise in energy costs and associated inflation affects the U.S more than any revenue from more expensive exports of gas would cover. As for the video of Nuland, in 2021, the U.S would actually withdraw sanctions and let the pipeline go forward, we know now following the invasion, that the U.S, being aware of the potential invasion, and lining up a united front, asked Germany to let the pipeline go on the chopping block, which Germany agreed in the event of war, believing Russia was bluffing, and seeing the opportunity to finally get the pipeline underway.

in hindsight, it was one of the most beneficial foreign policy decisions by the Biden administration, ensuring a united NATO alliance, allowing France and Germany to seek out negotiations, and when Russia invaded, ensured sanctions would be very tough.

Yeah, this bit has been covered by enough people in the know that I see no reason to doubt it.

I know a Presidential admin gets credit for things when they go well or don't, but I doubt Biden had much to do with this directly.  What he does get full marks for is having some of the best civil servants in positions of responsibility AND giving them the authority to do what needs to be done.  You have to go back quite a few admins to find that combination.

Steve

[FancyCat]

7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I am also quite puzzled by this.  I had always credited Putin with being a details man, especially when it came to manipulating people.  Why he spent 6 months in terror of mobilizing a reluctant population and then all of a sudden he doesn't seem to care one iota how angry they get.  This doesn't make sense, even if we go with my theory that the military situation is so bad that throwing untrained bodies into the front is the only hope he has.  Why?  Because he could have imposed vastly more order on the callups if he had wanted to.

My guess is that he is fairly clueless about how inept his underlings are.  He certainly didn't seem to know he didn't have a functional military before the war started.  He thought he had good intel services.  Why not also think that his conscription system is up to the task?

Someone knowledgeable did a good piece on the practical problems with Russian mass mobilization.  Dunno if it had been linked here or if I stumbled upon it (ISW for sure spoke to many of the problems).  Basically, Russia doesn't have a mass mobilization system in place.  Instead there is a peacetime system designed to handle about 125k intake over a period of, IIRC, 2 months.  Now he wants that same system to grab 300,000 in a matter of days.  Yeah, not going to happen.

Steve

Was it Kamil where I saw this? Or elsewhere? Or both? Oh well. It’s been suggested while Putin is great at hybrid conflict, he is not a military man. Some emphasis on how Ukraine was seen, FSB kept the lead over Ukraine and other former Soviet republics instead of the GRU and SVR. The early reports that the FSB leadership was cleared out after their failure in Ukraine looks to be false. Decent chance Putin has not undertaken the reform needed to improve the intel on Ukraine.

[Battlefront.com]

Early footage (Sept 9) of the offensive into Balakliya:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarRoom/comments/xpwlzt/september_6th_ukrainian_soldiers_on_the_outskirts/

Shows at least a platoon sized force finding abandoned fighting positions and not much else.  When on the march they appear to be well spaced and operating effectively as a unit.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Was it Kamil where I saw this? Or elsewhere? Or both? Oh well. It’s been suggested while Putin is great at hybrid conflict, he is not a military man. Some emphasis on how Ukraine was seen, FSB kept the lead over Ukraine and other former Soviet republics instead of the GRU and SVR. The early reports that the FSB leadership was cleared out after their failure in Ukraine looks to be false. Decent chance Putin has not undertaken the reform needed to improve the intel on Ukraine.

Yes, all of that and more.  The point is that Putin has been in charge of affairs within Russia for more than 20 years directly and a good chunk of time before that under Yeltsin.  Yet he doesn't seem to grasp how utterly incompetent his government is.  So much so that he didn't anticipate how mobilization would play out or he didn't care.  There is no excuse for this because a bunch of us armchair administrators saw this train wreck coming well ahead of time.  By now you'd think he'd get a clue how rotten his people are and take steps to at least attempt to minimize it. 

"FSB, I want you to go to X conscription place, grab Y head of conscription, haul him out into the streets with cameras rolling, then haul him away in handcuffs.  After you get him into custody, he is to attempt an escape and be shot dead.  Make sure everybody sees this happen, then I'm going to go on TV and say this is what happens to traitors"

Sheesh, what's the point of having a brutal tool of repression if you only use it to murder children and make it look like their father killed them before committing suicide?

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

ISW's report from the 27th reminds us of another thing the sham referendums do... remove autonomous authority over the DLPR forces.  They'll likely be integrated into the Russian Army and therefore have to fight wherever Shoigu's people tell them to fight.  They can no longer mutiny when told that place is outside of their home turf.  In theory   In reality there's going to be continued tensions (fingers crossed for shootouts!) between them.  Look at at what happened to the South Ossetian unit that packed up and hitchhiked home early in the war, and they were supposedly integrated into the Russian military a couple of years earlier.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I wonder how many tanks Russia has in operation now.  The number isn't likely to grow much with the mobilization, either because of equipment or personnel shortages.  Even worse for more specialized things like EW, aircraft, and even artillery.  Equipment, even when available, needs trained personnel.  Given how chaotic and inefficient the mobilization is, I'm not sure people with prior military skills are going to find themsleves assigned to the proper places.

Steve

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

I wonder how many tanks Russia has in operation now.  The number isn't likely to grow much with the mobilization, either because of equipment or personnel shortages.  Even worse for more specialized things like EW, aircraft, and even artillery.  Equipment, even when available, needs trained personnel.  Given how chaotic and inefficient the mobilization is, I'm not sure people with prior military skills are going to find themsleves assigned to the proper places.

Steve

This Jenga tower is going to fall soon. The question is will there still be a Russian empire when the bouncing stops. It seems too late Prigozhin to assume power and promise to run the war better, that ship has sailed. The question is could he go against type and negotiate a withdrawal from Ukraine and some minimal deal to get enough sanctions lifted to achieve the bare minimum of functionality. If he fails is there any central government left?

Full credit to billindc for the idea of Prigozhin as the last gasp of the old regime that fails miserably.

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

oh my gawd.  that is so unreal.  Russian citizen can go from engineer, teacher, doctor, nurse, whatever, to front in days and be captured within a week.  If someone predicted this 2 weeks ago we would've laughed him off the forum.  Ya just can't make stuff up that's crazier than this.

This has got to lead to a revolution????  Doesn't it??? 

It's a way for all the educated men, and maybe some women, to get a free trip to somewhere they can find a better job.  There's certainly some risk involved - you could get shelled on your way to the collection point, or lose your white flag and have trouble surrendering, but it's arguably not that different risk-wise from what a lot of other migrants go through.  Anybody who goes from skilled job to POW inside of a week is probably not intending to go back to Russia, at least not until there's regime change in a direction that won't punish POWs.

And at this point what can the Russian military do?  The right thing is complete withdrawal - their army is getting weaker and less organized while Ukraine's gets better trained and equipped every day. Probably no amount of operational pause will let Russia catch up at this point - they arguably lost the war in the operational pause from 2014 to 2022.  Both armies were in constant contact with their current opponent.  Ukraine used the time to cycle everybody who spent time in the army through the front for at least a short period, so that at the start all their reserves had at least been in a combat zone before.  And they got training and equipment from the west and developed international relationships that looked away from the former USSR.  Russia had exactly the same opportunity to improve training and equipment against an opponent they had already attacked and planned to pursue, but apparently chose corrupt business as usual, if not worse.  So even if they know it's hopeless, all anybody at the middle and above can do is follow orders and stay away from windows until something happens to Vlad.  All anybody at the bottom can do is hope they can get across a border before they're drafted, or get their hands into the air and surrender before they get shot or blown up.

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

That's not Tall Grass

Steve

The AI certainly seems to think anything taller than moss requires kneeling into perfect headshot position...!

But I digest...from the thread

[Kinophile]

The irony (in a war saturated with it) is just perfect - Ukraine again planning, executing and succeeding at exactly the kind of kessel-ing that the RU has constantly attempted and consistently failed at.

That plus river crossings of course.

In every respect, the UA is the mirror of the RuAF.

[Battlefront.com]

Normally I refrain from reposting profanities, but DefMon made an exception so I think we should be OK with it:

 

[Fernando]

With regard to the mobilization of specialists, especially those without any military experience, it seems normal to me to send them to a recruiting barracks, where they will be classified according to their experience and knowledge. A surgeon with no military experience must first receive some basic training (at a minimum learn the ranks) and then be sent to a medical unit for advanced training.

Of course it's Russia, and anything is possible. Such as sending an experienced surgeon to the front lines as infantry.

[Battlefront.com]

Oh boy, this is not very inspired leadership.  It also is further insight into the chaos surrounding the mobilization.  Which is another fun thing about this... Russia had 7 months to prepare for mobilization.  It seems to me they didn't more than 7 hours of thought into it.  The most I think they did was prepare lists of who to grab, solicited bribes to take names off, and so on.

This particular unit is supposed to be in training for a month.  Whether that's for real or just something to tell them so they don't run away on Day 1, no way to know for sure.  It could be that a certain portion of the newly mobilized were thrown into combat within a day or two just to stop Ukraine's gains in Kharkiv and Kherson, while others are at least getting a tiny bit of training to serve as a second wave.

You'd think they'd have learned from the 2nd Army Corps's apparent combat uselessness.

Steve

[Kraft]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think that is an AK-47 (not even an AKM) in the hands of the old timer out front.  Hey, at least he has some starts on his shoulders.

Steve

Maybe Bashar Al-Assad can help Putin out with some lend lease

[Anonymous_Jonze]

31 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Oh boy, this is not very inspired leadership.  It also is further insight into the chaos surrounding the mobilization.  Which is another fun thing about this... Russia had 7 months to prepare for mobilization.  It seems to me they didn't more than 7 hours of thought into it.  The most I think they did was prepare lists of who to grab, solicited bribes to take names off, and so on.

This particular unit is supposed to be in training for a month.  Whether that's for real or just something to tell them so they don't run away on Day 1, no way to know for sure.  It could be that a certain portion of the newly mobilized were thrown into combat within a day or two just to stop Ukraine's gains in Kharkiv and Kherson, while others are at least getting a tiny bit of training to serve as a second wave.

You'd think they'd have learned from the 2nd Army Corps's apparent combat uselessness.

Steve

What an absolute sh@tshow

[Letter from Prague]

It would be extremely stupid for anyone from the Allies to blow up the NS. There might be some benefits but those are marginal compare to the risk for completely destroying trust in the whole alliance in case it hiding it fails - and in modern world, hiding things fails pretty often.

I'm pretty sure Russia blew it up because someone showed Putin the clip of Biden saying "if Russia invades, NS will be no more" and he said "oh my god, this is the easiest false flag ever! let's do it!"

Given how much this clip gets reposted on pro-Russia twitter now. It's plastered everywhere.

[Taranis]

8 hours ago, akd said:

Rossiya!

Mobilization in Crimea.

Volkssturm ? The resemblance is still striking.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by Taranis

[Butschi]

8 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am going to ignore most of your rant, frankly if anyone were to push that kind of hatred towards any other group they would get tossed off this forum pretty quickly; however, we live in odd times.  

The Russian military and political system are responsible for this war.  I have no doubt some of the population does as well; however to blame an entire people - who you don’t recognize as a people, yet point to them as an evil homogeneous empire that has been a threat for hundreds of years - down to many who have nothing to do with this or actively opposed it, nor had a say in it because Russia lacks a democratic system, is wrong on so many levels.

If in your fractured Russian scenario - the one you are promoting, and I notice no denial of you promoting cultural genocide either btw- Russian elderly, women and children show up on on your borders in a humanitarian crisis I expect you and your nation to be better than the a$$holes we are currently supporting your nation against.  If you cannot do that - and for the record I really do not believe you represent your nation - then why are we even bothering with this whole war?  If a post-war Ukraine is suppressing democracy in re-taken regions, actively supporting civil strife in former Russian fragments (which would have to be in your plan), and let potentially thousands of people die because of their ethnicity (oh wait Russian isn’t a thing, so, how will you tell who to keep out) - the what the hell are we defending here?

If we wanted a brutal regime in Ukraine to ignore human rights and suppress freedoms based on pseudo-ethnicity then why we didn’t we just sit back and let Russia take the damn place?

I stand with Ukraine in this war, but I do not stand with you on this.  We want a Ukraine with a fully functional democracy for all its citizens, a Ukraine that recognizes and operates under international law and respects human rights, regardless of who is suffering.  That is the Ukraine that gets into NATO/EU - with Hungarian arm twisting if need be.  That is the Ukraine we invest hundreds of billions in reconstruction. That is the Ukraine we support and enforce Russian accountability for.

Not whatever nightmare you are selling here.

+1 out if likes

[NamEndedAllen]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I am also quite puzzled by this.  I had always credited Putin with being a details man, especially when it came to manipulating people.  Why he spent 6 months in terror of mobilizing a reluctant population and then all of a sudden he doesn't seem to care one iota how angry they get.  This doesn't make sense, even if we go with my theory that the military situation is so bad that throwing untrained bodies into the front is the only hope he has.  Why?  Because he could have imposed vastly more order on the callups if he had wanted to.

My guess is that he is fairly clueless about how inept his underlings are.  He certainly didn't seem to know he didn't have a functional military before the war started.  He thought he had good intel services.  Why not also think that his conscription system is up to the task?

Someone knowledgeable did a good piece on the practical problems with Russian mass mobilization.  Dunno if it had been linked here or if I stumbled upon it (ISW for sure spoke to many of the problems).  Basically, Russia doesn't have a mass mobilization system in place.  Instead there is a peacetime system designed to handle about 125k intake over a period of, IIRC, 2 months.  Now he wants that same system to grab 300,000 in a matter of days.  Yeah, not going to happen.

Steve

Do we know for sure he is still calling all the shots? All the talk of various kinds of coups replacing Putin are always about the future. But if Putin were suffering from a recent significant cognitive or other major decline, would the inner ring have quietly begun to isolate him from decisions? Would a quarreling, not especially competent “committee” be trying to manage an increasingly unmanageable disaster and making it worse by the hour? Is there a Bormann in the Kremlin? 
 

Wild shot in the dark, I know.  But sometimes when things seem increasingly impossible to believe, just maybe we shouldn’t. And that kind of chaos would underscore Cap’ and Steve’s repeated cautions about the greatest remaining threat Russia has.

I’m guessing there would be at least some whispers overheard from the Agencies if such an unthinkable thing had quietly happened. And no one has heard such whispers. So, fuggedaboudit. 
 

Alternatively, 180* reverse. Putin knew very well that mobilization would be an unmitigated disaster reeking of incompetence at every level. The howls from the Nats amid the battlefield defeats…he finally threw up his hands and is relying on the ability Steve pointed out.- he is manipulating where the blame pointer stops.

[Grigb]

4 hours ago, billbindc said:

 Also interesting to note that the FSB and associated security organs seemed to have not bothered with measures to control the borders despite the completely obvious rush of military aged males that were likely to head for the exits. Inaction like that starts to look like choice.

Border restrictions is an extremely sensitive topic for the RU public. It is basically a sign that the USSR is back. And apart from marginal part of RU Nats nobody (including majority of RU security apparatus) wants it back - it is better be lieutenant of RU security forces, drive Mercedes, call with iPhone, live in comfy European style expensive flat than be a general of USSR and live in cheap dacha, drive in barely more expensive Lada and call using babushka phone. Currently only MAMs are running. Close the borders even just for MAMs and whole country will run.

On other hand Kremlin living in separate world from RU plebs had no idea that commissariats would do what they always do - grab everybody and provoke panic. So, they did not really expect major panic and massed escape. They though that only useless bunch of liberals would run away. 

[Grigb]

7 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Do we know for sure he is still calling all the shots? All the talk of various kinds of coups replacing Putin are always about the future. But if Putin were suffering from a recent significant cognitive or other major decline, would the inner ring have quietly begun to isolate him from decisions? Would a quarreling, not especially competent “committee” be trying to manage an increasingly unmanageable disaster and making it worse by the hour? Is there a Bormann in the Kremlin?

There were signs of a soft coup including sign of Putin severe cognitive decline. I discussed it before. But the major thing that makes me wonder about coup is increasing hardcore public stance of RU. Putin is KGB man. And KGB men love to work in shadows while smiling in public. KGB being weak military-wise org does not like open confrontations. Yet what we see in the last couple of months is RU getting more and more confrontational with West. That's does not look like Putin.