How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The missing piece as far as I can see is a detailed understanding of "how and why" they are sucking, which I firmly believe the "Russia just Sucks" camp is vastly over-simplifying.

Well, I'm not in that camp.  I can, and have many times, enumerated the systemic problems within the Russian military and how those have translated into the train wreck we've seen in Ukraine.  Many of those problems go back to WW2 and even earlier.  We've discussed them all here many times already, including drawing in analysis from people that didn't get this war wrong from the start.  It's all pretty straight forward.

The important point, and it's the one you keep bringing up, is to not wave a hand and dismiss capabilities that Russia has which need to be respected.  After all, even though Russia has suffered horrendous losses and humiliation, it is still fighting a conventional war and killing lots of Ukrainians.  Failing to recognize this is very dangerous.  However, that doesn't mean a clear eyed examination of this sort can't ultimately come down to concluding Russia Sucks™. 

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, off the mark, do you have any supporting analysis or post-action to back any of this up?  Is this your perspective of events or does it align with post-war analysis?  If so, well ok, but here is some counter-narratives:

https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NS-D-10367-Learning-Lessons-from-Ukraine-Conflict-Final.pdf  I point to section 3 specifically (pgs 8-13)

Great looking report!  I'll read it in more detail later, but I looked over the section you pointed to and I don't see anything that conflicts with what I said.  I never said that Russia sucked at everything, and of all the things it sucks less at it is the use of it's traditional weapon of choice -> artillery.  We've seen that in this war big time, though we've noted that like all things Russian it's uneven.  In one spot there's quick and responsive firing with good ISR, in another batteries unload their rounds into open fields because their commander needed to report a glorious success without having ID'd a target.

I thought the section of the report on Russian air defenses read way too much into way too little info.  They said "...the conflict in eastern Ukraine has been the near absence of air power on both sides" and then said "In 2014, Ukrainian aviation units had old platforms and were poorly trained, which made both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters exceptionally vulnerable to Russian defenses. After suffering significant early losses, the Ukrainian military quickly all but abandoned close air support."

Yet they concluded:

"Russian integrated air defense has been extremely effective, which has significantly reduced the need for counter-air operations"

Huh?  A 90 pound weakling comes up to me, I punch him in the nose, he runs away, and we can conclude my kung-fu is super good?  Sorry, but that's exactly the sort of falawed analysis that got this 2022 war so very wrong.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1400/RR1498/RAND_RR1498.pdf  Pages 43-45 cover the period from May 14 - Feb 15 when conventional RA forces were fully engaged to stop the failing of their proxy Donbas forces from LNR/DPR - you can see how quickly the war shifted once the BTGs got engaged and specifically

First of all, let's remember that the Russian proxy forces were fighting with Russian military manned specialized equipment (including EW, counter battery systems, air defenses, ISR, command and control, etc.), Russian officers ("Shadows") were on the ground commanding ops, Russian logistics staff handled supplies, and even Russian military personnel (standing units and "vacationers") were a large part of the bayonet strength.  Yet Ukraine's scrappy barely post Soviet ad-hoc force with crappy equipment, corrupt leadership, traitors all over the place, and a brand new government was winning the ground war.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

"Although artillery skirmishes continued, both sides took a break to rearm, train, and consolidate between September 5, 2014, and January 13, 2015, when Russia launched a second offensive. Following a second encirclement and defeat at Debaltseve, Ukraine signed the Minsk II ceasefire on February 12, 2015, with terms highly favorable for Moscow." (p45)

I haven't read the Rand report yet, but I'm not optimistic about its quality based on this quote.  The above is factually incorrect!  Minsk II Ceasefire was on February 12, agreement was signed on February 15 with Ukraine still holding Debaltseve.  As per usual, the Russians didn't uphold their end of their own deal and continued to attack.  Ukraine didn't give up Debaltseve for another 3 days and the battle concluded on February 20th.

Cripes.  That is just sloppy.  But then again, Rand are the people that insisted Russia could take the Baltic countries in 2-3 days with minimal losses

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

This Rand document is fascinating in hindsight (note Kofman as lead author) as it gets a lot right in forecasting the weakness of Russian strategic assumptions, particularly in the political and information warfare domain.  It gets a lot wrong with respect to the potential of hybrid warfare, noting it was "inconsequential" when conventional forces arrived on the battlefield (p 70) when the RA crushed the Ukrainian defence.  I think that conclusion led mainstream thinkers down the wrong path at the start of this war.

Absolutely.  Especially because it's not what really happened

I will say this again.  Russian forces initially crushed the Ukrainians in the south (surprise attack in the flank from the safety of Russian territory), obligated Ukraine to withdraw their force inbetween Donetsk and Luhansk, and to withdraw northward from around Luhansk City.  But it wasn't cost free to Russian forces and when they found the Ukrainians had formed a decent line of defense the Russians offered Ukraine the Minsk I Agreement.  Since it was obvious to Ukraine that it needed to reorganize it's mostly chaotically organized forces, it agreed.  Russia didn't offer this because they were nice guys, they offered it because they realized they also needed to reorganize.

As soon as Russia thought it had reorganized enough it broke Minsk I and started a second offensive.  Their goals appear to have been to significantly increase the territory held by DLPR, especially territory it had lost in the summer.  All they got out of it was closing up the unstable salient (Debaltseve) and some more territory south of Donetsk City.  They tried to push in other places and keep their advances go, they failed and so once again Minsk II was something Russia needed almost as much as Ukraine did.

Most notably, Russia's "great" success at Debaltseve didn't manage to close an already existing bottleneck on thousands of withdrawing Ukrainian soldiers.  Similar to Ilovaisk, the bulk of the Ukrainian forces escaped.  Unlike Iloviask, the Ukrainians didn't trust Russian cease fires and therefore didn't get slaughtered out in the open in a straight up Russian war crime.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

https://mwi.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Analyzing-the-Russian-Way-of-War.pdf  Interesting peice on the link between Georgia 2008 and Ukraine - punchline the RA learned a lot from Georgia and underwent reforms which led to 2014 success...but not so much in 2022.

Yes, and I've already covered this The so-called Serdyukov reforms started in 2008 were conducted with typical Russian flair for half assing things.  Some very meaningful reforms were made, but others were never implemented.  Including the call for professionalized NCOs.  In 2012 he was sacked because, well, he was trying too hard to make the military more effective and less corrupt.  That was basically the end of the reforms, though that is not to say Russia stopped improving everything.  They just didn't fix the big stuff that was broken.  We've seen the results of that.  They

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

And finally the peice by Karber - the guy actually got so close he got hit in an MLRS strike:

https://prodev2go.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/rus-ukr-lessons-draft.pdf

In this peice Karber goes on at length at the effectiveness of the BTG and the emerging "Russian way of War", I know the US military took this pretty seriously, as did we as on paper the BTG could outrange any of our BattleGroups TFs.  We then saw similar trends in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and the mainstream estimate was they would unfold in Ukraine in 2022 - nothing on "Russia Sucks".

Others were not as kind to the BTG concept.  I didn't have an opinion one way or the other, though I guess I did agree with the critics of the BTGs that they were thin on logistics and redundancies.  In any case, once again the critics were shown to be correct.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So I do not agree that the post-war analysis nor the facts on the ground (see Rand study) support the idea that RA sub-par performance was observed. 

Then someone didn't do their homework.  Overall Russia did fine, but mostly because they had superior mass, shock, and a decidedly inferior enemy that had no international backing when it counted.  But if one looked below the surface, there were all the signs that this war in 2022 was not going to go well for Russia.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am not sure what sources you were pulling from to come to your conclusions; however, it might just be possible that 1) all the above mainstream post-war analysis is wrong, and 2) whatever sources you were using were correct, and Russia really did suck...but - the end-state does not support that perspective either. 

It's #1.  The mainstream post-war analysis was wrong because they weren't looking at the right things.  It's the same flawed thinking that got the analysts to flub their expectations for 2022.  Too much emphasis on bean counting and presuming across the board Russian proficiency.

So, what were my sources?  As I said, same sources we're using for this thread... OSINT.  That and 20 years of military study of how the Russians/Soviets fight.  As a reminder, I am a big fan/admirer of WW2 Soviet Union.  They had a good formula there, but they strayed from it.  Like having an excellent cake recipe and then leaving out a couple key ingredients and expecting the same end result.  Eggs matter

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Regardless of tactical performance Russia achieved pretty much the impossible, it fully annexed the Crimea and over half the Donbas region without a reaction from the West. 

That was more to do with the weakness of resolve in the West generally, huge amounts of Russian paid influence, shock, and the lack of preparations by Ukraine.  It was not because the Russian military was a large and functional weapon of war.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The more I read into this, I strongly suspect that Ukraine 2014 was Putin's "Czechoslovakia" moment and he convinced himself the west was so divided (divisions he helped make worse) that we would sit back and let Ukraine fall, so go "full Poland" in 2022.  There is no way to spin 2014 was anything other than a Russian "win" both on the battlefield and on the political stage based on how things unfolded on the ground.

Would you say the Korean War was a win for the UN side?  I wouldn't, neither do most historians.  Why?  Because the UN goal was to get right up to the Chinese border and be done with it.  And what happened?  Not that.

Russia had MUCH LARGER goals for its war in Ukraine.  It intended to take over everything from Odessa to Kharkiv without any military intervention.  This failed.  Utterly.  So it stepped things up and started an armed hybrid war, in which it got some of Dontesk and Luhansk.  It got defeated in Mariupol, one of its primary goals.  It also lost a big chunk of Luhansk (Girkin's famous 100 vehicle retreat debacle), including Slavyansk.  They were also losing the conventional war against a poorly equipped Soviet like enemy.  They were losing ground even after inserting Russian special forces units, including VDV BTGs.  Then in August they had to invest larger conventional forces and all they managed to do was stabilize the situation, retaking only part of what it lost during the summer.  A second push in the winter didn't yield much and then the war stayed frozen for 8 years.

Did Russia "win" Crimea?  Yes.  Brilliant operation, kudos to Putin.  Did it "win" the Donbas and the rest of Ukraine it actively tried to take?  No, it absolutely did not.  Korean War scenario there... it came away with more than it started, but it did not come away with what it intended to take.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am afraid that if this served as the foundation of how you saw the outcomes of this war then you too were working with incomplete concepts.  If you had gone into 2014 with "Russia Sucks due to Georgia 2008 = they will lose" you would have been completely wrong.

Because I was paying attention, I did not think this.  In fact, ahead of 2014 I had a higher opinion of Russia's forces than by 2015.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Bringing that theory to this war does not make it anymore correct - the theory found a war where it made more sense, but that does not make it a workable general theory.  This would be akin to developing a theory "The US Sucks at War" based on its performance in Korea (and there was plenty of evidence in the first year) and then predicting Vietnam as a US loss because "the US Sucks at War" - this glosses over so much nuance and context as to be nearly meaningless.  The mainstream analysis went the other way - "Russia is Terrifying in 2014, so they must be terrifying in 2022", which is not any less incorrect and shame on people who get paid for this work.

Right... so I looked at the supposedly stunning success of the Russian military in 2014, concluded that everybody was wrong because I had nothing better to do with my time, then by a complete freak accident turned out to be correct in 2022?  Because that's the only alternative to my narrative that I noticed things weren't all kittens and puppies for the Russians in 2014/2015 and, most importantly, assessed that the deficiencies I noted (which the analysts didn't) happened to be the EXACT same things that caused Russia to fail in 2022.

So which is it?  Bumbling good luck or better reading of tea leaves?

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So what?  "Russia Sucks at War" is not a workable or even accurate foundational theory in my opinion.  It is inconsistent with observed phenomenon in previous conflicts and fails to take into account the complexities of context and evolutions of warfare over time.  "Russia Sucks at This War", how badly and why is worth exploring in depth, not the least of which is how much the UA/western backed warfare is forcing the RA to "suck".  The very tricky part is to try and distill these reasons into trends that may continue and influence the next war.  There is significant risk in porting over all the observations from this war to the next one e.g. Tanks are Dead - I cannot say if tanks are dead, they appear somewhat out of place in this war but we need to understand "why" before we can say if the next war will see the same thing.  However, I think we do agree that Russian failures and Ukrainian success do not operate in glorious isolation of each other - they have a shared causality with each other.  And the study of that relationship does not neatly sum up to "Russia Sucks", at least not from my point of view. 

 

I've said it 100 or more times already that concluding Russia Sucks™ based on a clear headed analysis of Russian capabilities is not a problem.  Saying Russia Sucks™ based on outcomes, not analysis, would be a big problem.  And in either case presuming that Russia can never fix what is broken is just a dumb statement to make.  I personally don't see much near-term chance of them fixing the core problems, but there's always another day after that to be concerned about.

Steve

[Seminole]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

To take the position of “well they didn’t take the whole Donbas = they suck” is a serious stretch given the context of the conflict.  Did they want the whole Donbas?

I think their expressed desire was for Luhansk and Donetsk as pro-Russian veto inside a Ukraine federation, giving them their buffer.

After the Sept '21 Ukraine-US meeting he tried to force the situation with an invasion (beyond the means of his army) to include seizing Kiev and installing a puppet government to implement Minsk II (and then some) before NATO was in place and any window to force the matter closed.

 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

Putin's Elite Tremble as Hardliners Call for ‘Stalinist’ Steps (msn.com)

Hopefully they are worried enough to remember how their pistols work. Anyone who lets Prigozhin become the heir apparent in the hopes of being left alone will get exactly what they deserve. They might get even more than they deserve, which you wouldn't think is possible in the mafia running Russia, but the Wagner boys will do their level best if these idiots  let them take over.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Hmm, ok lemme try and keep it from getting too weird.  

War is a social exercise and as such social frameworks are very important to its prosecution - I am pretty sure everyone gets that.  It can be argued that society, since the Agricultural Revolution and creation of complex societies, is not a homogeneous mass.  There exist dimensions to society, libraries have been written on this stuff but very little on how these dimensions interface with warfare.

War is a macro-social exercise in almost all war theory.  Clausewitz had his trinity of macro social blocks, and many have used these to describe the fundamental theories of warfare.  By macro, I mean at a state or pseudo state level it is comprised of manufactured sectors of society - government, military etc - this in contrast to organic social structures. The relationship between macro and organic has been touched upon - “skeleton vs cellular” by Appadurai for example. Looking back a war before complex society anthropologist like Keeley write about how pre-historic warfare was tribal and below the “threshold of formation”.  Micro social structures are an ocean of humanity relationships and cultures that reside under the macro notions of a state or other large grouping.  They are your family, neighborhoods and friends - Harari refers to this as intimate communities vs imagined communities of macro structures.

Ok, so what?  Well if we accept that society is comprised of macro structures resting on top of organic micro-social structures then central to prosecution of warfare is the relationship between the two.  We can side step how that relationship affects Will and focus on warfare within these two dimensions itself.  The vast majority of military power is designed to fight within a macro-social context.  Militaries are designed, built and employed as an extension of macro-structures (mostly, but there have been exceptions).  These are designed to fight other macro-structures in a collision as has been described by many. 

Where things get weird is when macro structures attempt to deliver effects into micro-social constructs.  An infantry combat team is not designed to deliver effects within a micro context - beyond blunt approaches of wholesale elimination, which is a very narrow option set.  When thrust into a situation where military is going to need to be able to deliver effects into this space they have developed specialists and special units.  SOF is most often employed in this space but there are others.  Police forces are another interesting example as they are purpose built to work in a micro-social context “walking a beat” but have to specialize to create formation and function on a macro level e.g, riot control.

”Ah Capt but what about the tactical level, is that not simply a micro-level of warfare”…no, but thanks for asking.  The framework of macro-micro in warfare is not about scale it is about orientation.  A single soldier in a platoon attack is still orientated towards macro constructs of warfare.  A deserter running away from the war is orientated towards micro-social constructs, the difference is not the soldier but which way they are facing and the impact of that on a wider scale is how entire armies fall apart.

Many of our failures over the last twenty years has been an inability to effect those micro social structures, in fact they have turned on us many times.  Sending conventional forces designed for macro warfare is the epitome of insanity.  Clearly the Russias took this into account but then threw those specialized security forces into a conventional war and hilarity ensued.  

This is the tip of a very large iceberg because within those micro-social structures is an enormous amount of human energy.  We kick upstairs to the state but the majority of human energy never left the intimate relationship space.  That energy tend to be very localized and short range but when it boils over and start to emerge as a macro force, well that is when revolutions happen.  So there is a link to subversive warfare in all this as well.  

In the case of this war, the failure in Russian strategy is not only in regard to big red lines on the map, it was a failure to create sufficient effects within micro-social structures to avoid wide scale groundswell resistance, and they have shown no real plan to win these structures over post -conflict - I strongly suspect the level of partisan resistance in occupied has been under reported as has the wide scale oppression.  Finally that fire has a risk of spreading into Russia itself which is what all the talk of upheavals etc have been sitting upon.

Does that help a bit?

Well I got more out of than I did any of the humanities classes I took in college, and I paid a fair bit for those. Learned a whole new approach to the problem. If I may attempt to synthesise a bit, mobilization is extremely dangerous to Putin because it is disrupting and upsetting micro social structures which previously had a non aggression pact with the macro social regime?.And even Putin, who is the runaway winner for the least nice guy of this decade, understands that is real risk to the regime. Even though he clearly cares absolutely nothing for the average mobik.

Edited November 9, 2022 by dan/california

[dan/california]

 

Hopefully there will be more good news tomorrow.

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Seminole said:

I think their expressed desire was for Luhansk and Donetsk as pro-Russian veto inside a Ukraine federation, giving them their buffer.

After the Sept '21 Ukraine-US meeting he tried to force the situation with an invasion (beyond the means of his army) to include seizing Kiev and installing a puppet government to implement Minsk II (and then some) before NATO was in place and any window to force the matter closed.

 

Yeah, and there's this too.  Kaufman et all were wrong about Minsk II.  Ukraine signed it, got a break from the intense war, and was able to rebuild both its governmental systems as well as the military for 8 years.  What did Russia get out of it?  Nothing more than it had when the document was signed.

Russia's intent was to have Minsk II saddle Ukraine with two Russian puppet states.  Ukraine would foot the bills and would have its internal politics disrupted.  Russia would then pick a time of its choosing to pursue other options for destroying Ukraine.  This lack of Minsk II implementation has been a sore spot with Russia and was one of the publicly stated reasons for this war in 2022.

What happened instead is that Russia had to pay all the bills for the two puppet regimes, they had zero influence on Ukrainian politics, and the 8 year pause in fighting gave Ukraine time to solidify as a nation, vastly reduce Russian influence, foster tight relations with the West, and build a pretty damned good military.  Russia also got significant sanctions which, despite the Russian state propaganda, hurt really badly.  It also lost a lot of its media influence in the West as people paid attention to where anti-Ukrainian propaganda and Russian disinformation was coming from.  NATO also took the hybrid war threat seriously and began "inoculating" itself from its effects.  Including making it known to Russia that "Green Men" would mean Article 4.  Additionally, Putin greatly reduced the NATO and EU capacity to ignore Russian aggression which, in no small way, is why such a strong and immediate response hit Russia in 2022.

I'm not saying that this means Ukraine "won" the 2014-2022 conflict, because it most definitely did not.  What I am saying is that the presumption that Russia "won" is a matter of perspective and qualification.  Russia definitely didn't win the war against Ukraine.  That's being decided now and it doesn't look too good for Russia

Steve

[dan/california]

 

[dan/california]

random happy anecdote, need one of those occasionally.

[Battlefront.com]

Dimitri translated the video from Snihurivka.  Russians filming their own destruction, though Rybar is saying it's from some other place and the forces are LPR.  First I've seen of this video, not that it counts for much:

 

[Kinophile]

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/ukraine-continues-to-negotiate-on-leopard-2-tanks/

 

Hmmm

[kevinkin]

Oh my ..

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-youth-told-get-ready-join-front-line-1757518

Even Dave Ramsey would be more motivational. 

[cesmonkey]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/man-killed-defending-ukrainian-city-from-russian-forces-1.6644569
Sask. man killed defending Ukrainian city from Russian forces, family says

Quote

Farmer Joseph Hildebrand, 33, served 2 tours in Afghanistan before volunteering on front lines in Ukraine

Quote

Jake said he was told his brother was one of a dozen soldiers — some Ukrainian, some from South America and elsewhere — who went on a mission near the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.

Quote

It's unclear how Joseph Hildebrand died, but Jake was told nine of the 12 men on the mission were killed.

 

[The_MonkeyKing]

presumably the Russians blowing Bridges in their rear areas in Kherson left and right.

Why for any other reason than imminent retreat?

EDIT:

 

 

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by The_MonkeyKing

[Huba]

There's some info on UA telegram that since last night AFU made some progress in Snihurivka. No details available at the moment, and russian channels are dead quiet about the situation. 

[The_MonkeyKing]

and rumor mill starting up:

 

[Huba]

13 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

and rumor mill starting up:

 

Right, there's a sudden burst of news on Twitter now. I'd say that even if they plan to completely vacate the right bank, they have to do it gradually - first move all the forces to fortified regions in Kherson/ Berislav, then evacuate across the river. How will they do it when in range of UA artillery is to be seen, and at the moment water temperature in Dnipro is 6.4°C...

Edit: and a helpful map from Kherson Cat:

 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Huba

[Taranis]

About bridges :

"This aerial photo taken on November 8, 2022 and released by Russian federal road agency Rosavtodor shows restoration work on damaged parts of the Kerch Bridge that connects Crimea with Russia, hit by an explosion on October 8, 2022. Inaugurated by Vladimir Putin in 2018, this bridge is logistically crucial for Moscow, an essential transport link for transporting military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. HANDOUT / AFP"

[Huba]

Brother morale again very low  RU telegram ColonelCassad says that there will be official announcement regarding Kherson in the evening.

 

[Beleg85]

Another Sign of Good Will sems to be coming closer and closer. Unfortunatelly looks like planned retreat toward better positions...

 

A video and short thread about one group of mobiks. Their relatives came to military depot at Valuiki in Belgorod Oblast (RU) and complain to officers that since unit was completelly shattered at Makiivka ("159 guys from 4 brigades survived"- meaning counting mobiks only, not all soldiers) broken mobiks are going back on foot (!) from Krasnorichensk in Luhansk back to Valuiki. 159 kms.

 

[The_Capt]

12 hours ago, Seminole said:

I think their expressed desire was for Luhansk and Donetsk as pro-Russian veto inside a Ukraine federation, giving them their buffer.

After the Sept '21 Ukraine-US meeting he tried to force the situation with an invasion (beyond the means of his army) to include seizing Kiev and installing a puppet government to implement Minsk II (and then some) before NATO was in place and any window to force the matter closed.

 

That was the overall political objective, in fact this war points to even broader ones; however, Russia has demonstrated a strategy of incrementalism warfare as opposed to full on land grabs - examples of this are throughout the Baltics and it’s Near Abroad, it is what makes this war so odd.  My point was that the overall objectives of the 2014 action were not clear, and while I am sure Russia would have been very happy with the entire Donbas region, the actual objectives of the operation in context of the overriding requirement to minimize western reaction are still in doubt and likely in Putin’s head.  

There is no evidence that points to the RA running out of gas in early ‘15 (in fact quite the opposite) forcing the Russian political level to the table - that is pure fiction as far as I can tell, particularly the depth of the Russian military gas tank demonstrated in this war.

Finally looking at Minsk II in detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements

The thing got agreement on “elections of self-government” (para 4),for the Ukraine to still pay for land it just lost (p8 ) and to reform its very constitution to open the door to “decentralization” (para 11) …where I come from when a nation is agreeing to re-write its constitution at the insistence of another, after armed conflict, is a solid loss.

The Minsk II agreement gave Russia exactly what it wanted, a legal foundation for full annexation without a peep from the western powers - they even got OSCE monitors in ffs!  

Edited November 9, 2022 by The_Capt

[Huba]

"Accident"

 

[akd]

Looks like 2x Excalibur:

 

[The_Capt]

11 hours ago, dan/california said:

Well I got more out of than I did any of the humanities classes I took in college, and I paid a fair bit for those. Learned a whole new approach to the problem. If I may attempt to synthesise a bit, mobilization is extremely dangerous to Putin because it is disrupting and upsetting micro social structures which previously had a non aggression pact with the macro social regime?.And even Putin, who is the runaway winner for the least nice guy of this decade, understands that is real risk to the regime. Even though he clearly cares absolutely nothing for the average mobik

Perfect, welcome to the deep end of the warfare ocean - and I do not mean to be condescending in anyway, there are GOs in service who don’t understand this. The famous “social contract” is another example of the vertical tension in society.  One also has to consider the horizontal tension within a micro-social construct so sending kids from one region to die while other get to stay home.  The system works so long as people believe enough in their imagined communities “King and Country!”  But the second they start to realize that their real community is losing badly, the equation starts to shift.

Putin has been bafflingly obtuse to the realities in Ukraine but I strongly suspect he is a master at managing the Russian micro-social spaces, which is what this war is really all about.  His problem is convincing micro-social systems that Ukraine/NATO/Whoever are a direct threat to individuals and their real communities and worth sacrifice (there is that word again).  Despite the slathering rhetoric displayed on this forum, I suspect that the average Russian is pretty “meh” on Ukraine and doesn’t care about it anymore than the average US or Canadian citizen really cared about Iraq of Afghanistan - I mean there is caring as a shareholder and the there is caring as a stakeholder, kind of thing.  

The second Putin starts putting too many Russians into the fire he risks unlocking a lot of that dormant human energy.  He has built an entire scheme to keep it dormant but if it shifts on its own, well that is how leaders wind up hanging from street lamps or pulled out of culverts and shot.  The really scary part is that external powers can directly influence that micro-social space, it ain’t easy but we call it political warfare, among other names.  And if I were a betting man I would guess that the architectures that do this sort of thing have been kicked into high gear.

[Beleg85]

3 minutes ago, Huba said:

"Accident"

If true: Kremlin returning to its loving policy of killing all separatist leaders who are not needed, just in case. Despite reading this for years, I am still constantly amazed there are so many people in Russia genuinly believing it is about patriotism and nation and not bitch-cold powerplay.

[Huba]

Confirmed. It is crazy that RU society just accepts/ chooses not to believe in the way the human life is treated there.

 

[Beleg85]

5 minutes ago, Huba said:

Confirmed. It is crazy that RU society just accepts/ chooses not to believe in the way the human life is treated there.

Really, if this country would not exist somebody would need to invent it. They behave like those stereotypical Soviets from early Bond movies and more.

Poetry in memoriam, very nice...

But seriously, I am very curious about reaction on Russian nats internal communication lines. So pitty Grigb is not with us.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Beleg85