How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, BlackMoria said:

Pray tell, explain it to me then.  You said Russia went to a war footing.   I am not seeing any impact, to date, on the battlefield.  Just the same old russian tactic have trying to brute force their way through the Ukrainian defensive wall.  Just how does all you say result in Russia coming out on top.  Because I, and a whole lot of others on this forum, over the past 12 months, are seeing the same thing you must be seeing and yet, coming to a completely different conclusion of where this is headed.

Didn't you read what Khalerick just said?  We are all wrong.  None of us have been paying attention to anything, just regurgitating Ukrainian war propaganda.  Certainly none of us have any life experiences to draw from.  I mean, you for example... being in the military and serving in a warzone clearly hasn't helped you know your arse from your elbow about this war.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

So, yeah, we've had this discussion too often without coming to a conclusion. Might as well agree to disagree.

At this point I'm not sure enough of what we are arguing about to know if we agree or disagree

Steve

[danfrodo]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

At this point I'm not sure enough of what we are arguing about to know if we agree or disagree

Steve

I don't really have any clear idea of what that feller was trying to say about the war, overall.  I think he made a very clear case that everyone here is an idiot.  I feel bad that it's been pointed out how stupid I am and how I spend time reading things by stupid people.  So I'll just ignore Khalerick so I can keep my head in the sand, proving his point that we can't handle/don't want the truth.

[Eddy]

10 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

At this point I'm not sure enough of what we are arguing about to know if we agree or disagree

At least we've got away from that bloody balloon!

[Battlefront.com]

25 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

But seriously, I don't remember such concentrated armour attacks for a long time.

Neither have I.  Bilohorivka is the last time I recall seeing that sort of density (provided the reports are accurate).  Seems the largest size force in one area we've seen is more in the range of 10 vehicles.

I hope we get a lot more information about this attack because I think it is significant.  For months now it seems Russia has learned that concentrating that much stuff in one small area is the easiest way to lose it all at one time.  Reinforced platoons with a few tanks and IFV/APCs has been their go-to tactic ever since the Summer.  Company sized attacks seem to be mostly dismounted infantry.  Battalion scale attacks non-existent.  Depending on what the vehicles are, 30 is getting closer to a battalion sized mechanized attack.

I'm very curious what the thinking was for launching an attack of this size when it seems counter to everything they've been doing for most of this war.  Did they think they had achieved a breakthrough and this was intended to be an exploitation force?  Did they think it was time to give massed armor another shot?  Are they trying to find alternatives to massed artillery due to shortages?

There's a lot of possibilites, including that it was really 10 vehicles and someone screwed up the reporting

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, Eddy said:

At least we've got away from that bloody balloon!

Cripes, I know.  I was getting ready to put "balloon" into the Forum's banned word list.

Steve

[FlemFire]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Wow.  No, I don't have to accept that perspective because doing so would be in conflict with mountains of evidence and also not understanding what the war in 2014/2015 was all about.  Or Russia's 20+ year history of relations with Ukraine.

This was a war of conquest from the outset.  And yes, it was horribly planned and resourced, but Putin isn't the first dictator to screw up this big.

Steve

 

Nobody's forcing you to accept anything 

FWIW, while I disagree with you here, I do think it could very well be the case of conquest now.

 

13 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, then I suggest a bit of introspection in how you interact with others.  This is your second major dust up with people here and IIRC the last one was similar to this one in that you don't seem very interested in debate, just hammering a point home without much evidence and expecting us to all succumb.

Your characterization of well thought out and explained responses as "absurd" clearly is a red flag.

Steve

Fair enough.

 

15 minutes ago, Twisk said:

@Khalerick

-  Where does Ukraine retreat to that it has better odds in the Bahjmut direction? 

You say that they shouldn't be fighting there but where should they fight? The terrain is mostly the same for nearly 60-70kilometers in that direction.
 

- Why is this current moment different than Lyschansk, Sievierodonetsk /previous UAF setbacks last year?

I remember many talks last summer about the dire straights of the UAF as bad news came out of Lysychansk, bad videos, and bad news elsewhere on the front. What is unique about the current moment?


More philosophically I don't believe that Ukraine suing for peace being good for the nation-state at all. Lives would be saved if fighting were ended but if the war ends with the map like it exists now Ukraine won't ever recover. @LongLeftFlank described Ukraine as an "armed camp" many posts ago and I think your suggestion for suing for peace is achieving that future.

And while Russia is not a democracy it has a psuedo middle class being the reseidents of core cities. Correct me if I am wrong here but none of the mobilizations have really bitten into those populations. Instead they focus on residents of the hinterland and prisoners, why is that?

 

Russia can hang themselves in maneuver warfare. They can't hang themselves sitting in trenches bombing the hell out of you. If you roll the clocks back a bit and actually look at NATO's military doctrine, and more importantly the USA's back when Russia was their focus, there's a pretty vested interest in meeting the Soviets in open plains. There is not much interest in getting into artillery slugging matches with them. If you flip through old Cold War analyses, Russia's artillery stock comes up repeatedly. Now look at the equipment given to the Ukraine. All these items gain tactical advantages when used in open plains. I just saw a clip recently where a number of Russian tanks bumbled into a minefield. They just had a loss of what looked like two or three tanks. To mines. What do you think that looks like if Ukraine invites Russia into that sort of war?

Yes, you have to give up terrain to do this. As mentioned before, when you draw out Russia's advances they risk cohesion loss. I saw this myself in Georgia in 2008. Russians bumbling about everywhere against an almost nonexistent enemy. They just don't have the discipline and command of Western armies. But you don't need either of those things to put, as some people say, 40-year old artillery shells into a cannon. And, still granting this notion, I think even 40-year old shells exploding still do more or less the same thing to human bodies.

 

Just now, BlackMoria said:

Pray tell, explain it to me then.  You said Russia went to a war footing.   I am not seeing any impact, to date, on the battlefield.  Just the same old russian tactic have trying to brute force their way through the Ukrainian defensive wall.  Just how does all you say result in Russia coming out on top.  Because I, and a whole lot of others on this forum, over the past 12 months, are seeing the same thing you must be seeing and yet, coming to a completely different conclusion of where this is headed.

Unending* brute force. It's not like we're going to see Russia dumping 1,000,000 soldiers into Ukraine. But they can dump material into the front pretty much forever. This is why I don't like the West's response of sending bits and pieces. Either help Ukraine win the war or don't. I don't like half-measures.

 

[danfrodo]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

Neither have I.  Bilohorivka is the last time I recall seeing that sort of density (provided the reports are accurate).  Seems the largest size force in one area we've seen is more in the range of 10 vehicles.

I hope we get a lot more information about this attack because I think it is significant.  For months now it seems Russia has learned that concentrating that much stuff in one small area is the easiest way to lose it all at one time.  Reinforced platoons with a few tanks and IFV/APCs has been their go-to tactic ever since the Summer.  Company sized attacks seem to be mostly dismounted infantry.  Battalion scale attacks non-existent.  Depending on what the vehicles are, 30 is getting closer to a battalion sized mechanized attack.

I'm very curious what the thinking was for launching an attack of this size when it seems counter to everything they've been doing for most of this war.  Did they think they had achieved a breakthrough and this was intended to be an exploitation force?  Did they think it was time to give massed armor another shot?  Are they trying to find alternatives to massed artillery due to shortages?

There's a lot of possibilites, including that it was really 10 vehicles and someone screwed up the reporting

Steve

That is a indeed huge number of vehicles lost in one day, if true.  I wonder how much pressure there is from Putler for commanders to 'get results'.  We know that this kind of thing happens, just look at hitler (later in war) & stalin (earlier in war) and the insane things they forced their commanders to do.  I can't decide whether these very costly attacks are more political or are actually meant to attrit UKR forces or are intended as spoiling attacks or what.  

If I were Putler I'd be digging holes & keeping lots & lots of arty shells around plus building up lots of mobile armored reserves.  Burning up men & shells (and now vehicles) for (nearly) nothing is the kind of thing that can come back to haunt a feller when the ground dries.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Khalerick said:

I’m always fascinated whenever I run into people who vomit links and graphs and numbers without even understanding what they mean. You have my thanks for posting those graphs, even if you and apparently a lot of other people do not grasp what they actually mean. I can simplify it for you, though. If you look at the economic metrics of Russia in 2014 and on, you might notice they continue into 2015, 2016, etc. This is called a crisis.

For reference, I suggest dialing back your google searches to 2014 to understand how obvious and apparent this was quite literally immediately. Remember, Russia annexed Crimea in March. By April, that is 1-month later, IMF was already ringing alarm bells and claiming Russia to be in a recession:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27221345

 

Note, the financial crisis itself hadn’t even set its teeth in yet. That would be another half-year away as the ruble plummeted in value and investors started abandoning ship at great speed heading into 2015. This is why those graphs show a horror show straight running into and through 2016. Keep that in mind: 2014, 2015, 2016, absolute nosedive.

 

 

Now let’s look at today.

https://www.grid.news/story/global/2023/02/01/russias-economy-is-now-forecast-to-grow-faster-than-germanys-and-britains-in-2023-how-is-that-possible/

 

Pray tell, did you see such forecasts in 2015? In the same way Russians mistakenly thought Zelensky would flee and Kiev would fold, the West mistakenly thought Russia’s economy would buckle. Note, the sanctions in 2014 were small-ball. The sanctions in 2022 are the veritable decoupling of Russia from the entire West. Do I have to explain the gulf of difference there in terms of severity? Do I need an additional 1,000 words to explain the STARK difference between the resultant two data sets that unfolded after? Feel free to let me know.

First off, I am not saying the 2014-16 Russian financial crisis was not a thing.  However, if you actually read some of those links you would see that there was more to it than "western softball sanctions".  The price of oil being a major one.  

What I am saying is that we are only at the start of this thing and the Russian economy is looking like it has been hurt worse than it was by 2015.  With all my "vomited graphs and charts" from economic sites, you still have not really answered that point.  This is leading me to believe that you really do not want new information or data in creating a better knowledge framework, you instead appear to just want to see and hear what you already believe and then promote that.

Oh look another BBC article - 

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61061619

Sure we had an impact back in 2014 on an already vulnerable economy.  And in 2022 we have had a similar impact - numbers show worse impact - on an economy that was much better shored up and prepared...while oil prices are in an entirely different context.

I am going to let your source "The Grid" slide: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/25/unusual-origins-news-site-00001776

But if we are going to play "my voodoo economic priests say this"

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/forecast-2023-putins-russia-will-look-more-like-north-korea/

https://www.bofit.fi/en/monitoring/weekly/2023/vw202301_1/

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/putins-war-costs-changing-russias-economy

So here we are, you with some strong opinions, an IMF report that may be right or wrong and an old bbc story.  It does not change the facts, something largely absent from your position.

1 hour ago, Khalerick said:

The rest about lost territories is embarrassing. I grow tired of the propagandized sides of this conflict who fail to see reality for what it is. Losing 1/5th your territory is not to be taken lightly. I just don't really understand what mindset is required to be so cavalier in dismissing that. As for resources: Russia is an oil-state. Its economy is entirely centered around its natural resources, but we're going to sit here and pretend it carving itself access to a shale reserve and natural gas deposits is definitely not in their objective sets. Alright. Whatever. The fact people subsequent to this post make points about Russia losing access to foreign experts still, truly, do not at all grasp what is going on. The global oil market was shunted and shifted and yet people are not recalibrating their thinking at all.

Ah, ok I see it now.  You "get it" and everyone else does not.  Ukraine lost about 10% of it territory in 2014, the entire Crimea being the big one.  In that intervening 8 years here are some more "vomited" inconvenient facts:

https://tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/gdp

That is the Ukrainian GDP after 2014.  Here are the growth rates:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=UA

All upward except for 2020 - you know the middle of that pandemic thing.  So that is with 10% of "critical economic land in the Donbas) occupied.

Ukraine also reformed its military power to the point that is crushed the initial attempts at invasion occupation of a military force (and economic power) that should have crushed it.

So no, having an additional 7.5% of one country occupied, on top of the 10% they lost while the west was sleeping is not "taken lightly".  However, it is not a sign of "unassailable doom" or that Ukraine is in the middle of crushing defeat.

So here I will tell you what.  Let's put the economic thing to the side.  I will accept that maybe the Russian economy may be more resilient than we thought and can possibly keep its head above water longer than anyone has planned for.  It is a possibility and let's not dismiss that.  I would also offer that a recognition of the damage already done is worth considering as we continue to ramp up pressure and push-back.  In short, as to the economic warfare being waged, the jury is still out.

Now as a "studier of warfare", answer my next post down the line.  Provide some actual facts that demonstrate how the trajectory the RA is on is going to change.  How the course of this war has gone in any direction but horrible for the RA.  How the UA has, and has every sign of being able to continue to prosecute this war on the battlefield.  And I mean real facts, not stuff you heard in a bar or on Reddit or YouTube.  Analysis or assessment by people who know what they are talking about.

You came on this thread with a position.  One that you clearly are not going to come off.  You are essentially promoting "negotiate now" as the only reasonable choice, less Ukraine continue down its doomed path of defeat and drags the west with it.  You have not provided one corroborating assessment/analysis nor even your own research - you have indeed mocked the presentation of facts that do not align with your view.  I have posted a lengthy analysis and assessment of the war to date, with references and demonstrated that it has been on a trajectory for severe Russian defeat. 

You disagree, now prove it.  Walk us through your analysis framework and how the RA is going to turn this around so definitively that the Ukrainian and western political level needs to seriously rethink their calculus.  Do you have a different assessment of the war to date?  Let's hear it.  Do you have a different assessment of RA capability, force employment and generation?  Put it forward, with maybe a few "vomited references" to back it up.

 

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

True enough - at least for the West. And guess what: even with all our bickering and with one and a half arms tied behind our backs, it's still more than enough.

Russia’s entire annual military budget is about 1.25 Lockheed-Martins.  And that’s Lockheed’s revenue during peacetime.  And that’s just one company of the US MIC.  And that doesn’t begin to account for differences in technical capabilities.  Sure, people get paid less in RU so your ruble goes farther, but when you factor in the Russian corruption I suspect that cost advantage goes away.

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Khalerick said:

Russia simply has vastly more industrial capacity and manpower than Ukraine. That’s really all there is to it. 

Here is where...amongst the flummery...we get to brass tacks.

You are reducing the war in terms of resources to Russian industrial capacity vs Ukrainian industrial capacity. Any realistic assessment should be comparing Russian abilities to Ukraine's plus that of the nations who are providing support. In that case, the scales are heavily weighted in Ukraine's favor.

As to manpower, there too you make some fundamental mistakes.

First, gross numbers are a bad measure. Russia labors under highly inefficient logistical systems that eat up manpower. It's troops are in relative terms very badly equipped with less accurate systems, less advanced targeting at a lessor distance, poorly supplied, etc. History is replete with larger armies losing to smaller ones. Russia in 1917 springs to mind for some reason.

Second, the manpower pool a country possesses isn't remotely the same thing as what it can actually bring to a fight. Russia is an older country. That industrial capacity you overestimate needs workers. There are political constraints to limit who can be conscripted without destabilizing the state. How many you can minimally feed, arm and actually deliver in some sort of fighting condition factors in. And every single one of these conditions has been observed so far in the war on the Russia side. 

Fundamentals.

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Khalerick said:

Actually, the Russian economy is in a sense much stronger than Italy/Canada, but also much weaker. That is the fundamental high-risk/high-reward cost of being a natural resources exporter and little else. It's economic blackjack. As for industrial capacity, Russia is on a war footing. The West is not. It's not a video game. You don't just tally up base #'s and go off of that. If NATO were actually fighting Russia then it'd be a different story. Not just economically, but militarily. But they're not. They're arguing about how many tanks to send to Ukraine instead of just up and doing it.

If you think that the West needs to be on war footing for Ukraine to beat Russia in this war then again, you simply don't understand the fundamental facts of the situation. Ditto on the idea that the Western government's are just "arguing about tanks to send".  I don't mean that to be insulting. I'm telling you bluntly that your arguments sound naive and superficial.

[danfrodo]

2 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Here is where...amongst the flummery...we get to brass tacks.

You are reducing the war in terms of resources to Russian industrial capacity vs Ukrainian industrial capacity. Any realistic assessment should be comparing Russian abilities to Ukraine's plus that of the nations who are providing support. In that case, the scales are heavily weighted in Ukraine's favor.

As to manpower, there too you make some fundamental mistakes.

First, gross numbers are a bad measure. Russia labors under highly inefficient logistical systems that eat up manpower. It's troops are in relative terms very badly equipped with less accurate systems, less advanced targeting at a lessor distance, poorly supplied, etc. History is replete with larger armies losing to smaller ones. Russia in 1917 springs to mind for some reason.

Second, the manpower pool a country possesses isn't remotely the same thing as what it can actually bring to a fight. Russia is an older country. That industrial capacity you overestimate needs workers. There are political constraints to limit who can be conscripted without destabilizing the state. How many you can minimally feed, arm and actually deliver in some sort of fighting condition factors in. And every single one of these conditions has been observed so far in the war on the Russia side. 

Fundamentals.

Well said, BillBinDC.  Adding to this are the hundreds of thousands of young men who have fled RU.  That's a big resource lost, especially considering these would be more likely to be educated than average and would've helped to raise the overall tech capability of RU army.

[chrisl]

Just now, danfrodo said:

Well said, BillBinDC.  Adding to this are the hundreds of thousands of young men who have fled RU.  That's a big resource lost, especially considering these would be more likely to be educated than average and would've helped to raise the overall tech capability of RU army.

Might as well throw in 30 years of brain drain, too.  I know a lot of really good engineers and scientists from the former USSR.  And they all work in the west now.

[FlemFire]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

First off, I am not saying the 2014-16 Russian financial crisis was not a thing.  However, if you actually read some of those links you would see that there was more to it than "western softball sanctions".  The price of oil being a major one.  

What I am saying is that we are only at the start of this thing and the Russian economy is looking like it has been hurt worse than it was by 2015.  With all my "vomited graphs and charts" from economic sites, you still have not really answered that point.  This is leading me to believe that you really do not want new information or data in creating a better knowledge framework, you instead appear to just want to see and hear what you already believe and then promote that.

Oh look another BBC article - 

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61061619

Sure we had an impact back in 2014 on an already vulnerable economy.  And in 2022 we have had a similar impact - numbers show worse impact - on an economy that was much better shored up and prepared...while oil prices are in an entirely different context.

I am going to let your source "The Grid" slide: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/25/unusual-origins-news-site-00001776

But if we are going to play "my voodoo economic priests say this"

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/forecast-2023-putins-russia-will-look-more-like-north-korea/

https://www.bofit.fi/en/monitoring/weekly/2023/vw202301_1/

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/putins-war-costs-changing-russias-economy

So here we are, you with some strong opinions, an IMF report that may be right or wrong and an old bbc story.  It does not change the facts, something largely absent from your position.

Ah, ok I see it now.  You "get it" and everyone else does not.  Ukraine lost about 10% of it territory in 2014, the entire Crimea being the big one.  In that intervening 8 years here are some more "vomited" inconvenient facts:

https://tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/gdp

That is the Ukrainian GDP after 2014.  Here are the growth rates:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=UA

All upward except for 2020 - you know the middle of that pandemic thing.  So that is with 10% of "critical economic land in the Donbas) occupied.

Ukraine also reformed its military power to the point that is crushed the initial attempts at invasion occupation of a military force (and economic power) that should have crushed it.

So no, having an additional 7.5% of one country occupied, on top of the 10% they lost while the west was sleeping is not "taken lightly".  However, it is not a sign of "unassailable doom" or that Ukraine is in the middle of crushing defeat.

So here I will tell you what.  Let's put the economic thing to the side.  I will accept that maybe the Russian economy may be more resilient than we thought and can possibly keep its head above water longer than anyone has planned for.  It is a possibility and let's not dismiss that.  I would also offer that a recognition of the damage already done is worth considering as we continue to ramp up pressure and push-back.  In short, as to the economic warfare being waged, the jury is still out.

Now as a "studier of warfare", answer my next post down the line.  Provide some actual facts that demonstrate how the trajectory the RA is on is going to change.  How the course of this war has gone in any direction but horrible for the RA.  How the UA has, and has every sign of being able to continue to prosecute this war on the battlefield.  And I mean real facts, not stuff you heard in a bar or on Reddit or YouTube.  Analysis or assessment by people who know what they are talking about.

You came on this thread with a position.  One that you clearly are not going to come off.  You are essentially promoting "negotiate now" as the only reasonable choice, less Ukraine continue down its doomed path of defeat and drags the west with it.  You have not provided one corroborating assessment/analysis nor even your own research - you have indeed mocked the presentation of facts that do not align with your view.  I have posted a lengthy analysis and assessment of the war to date, with references and demonstrated that it has been on a trajectory for severe Russian defeat. 

You disagree, now prove it.  Walk us through your analysis framework and how the RA is going to turn this around so definitively that the Ukrainian and western political level needs to seriously rethink their calculus.  Do you have a different assessment of the war to date?  Let's hear it.  Do you have a different assessment of RA capability, force employment and generation?  Put it forward, with maybe a few "vomited references" to back it up.

 

 

I agree, forecasts in 2022 predicted Russia's economy to virtually flatline. I myself actually assumed it would and thought Russia was in absolute dire straits when they militarily screwed the pooch. If they were convulsing like they were in 2014, there's just no way they could have a timetable to adjust militarily in Ukraine. I mean, I think that's just a fact, albeit one in an alternate universe heh.

But their economy didn't buckle. Hence why forecasts change. I don't think the impact this time around has been worse when the forecasters peg Russia for greater growth than Europe in 2023. These are still forecasts, though, so who knows. Forecasts of 2022 were completely wrong. Forecasts of 2023 could also end up completely wrong. But I'm just saying what they say, which is that Russia is clearly not wilting like they should be. I actually don't know how much of an argument is to be had here beyond just -- gulp -- giving those dirty economists their due.

 

I'm not sure what economic discussion of the occupied territories are supposed to concern. I never disagreed that the status of these territories is currently poor. That only makes sense after they've been in conflict for years and have had outside subversion 24/7 from a now-invading neighbor. Lost territory is simply that, lost territory. It's just not good and I don't see just cause to argue otherwise. Providing they keep those territories, Russia will make use of them in their own way. Ukrainian territories being enveloped into Russia's general socioeconomic strata isn't exactly like oil falling into a bucket of water.

 

As for the conclusion or I guess my position, it's not negotiate "now." It's negotiate when you take the initiative. Two different things. Diplomacy and negotiation require compromise, and compromise is best had when you have bargaining chips. I said this a long time ago, or at least implied it, but today's statesmen leave a lot to be desired. When I see both sides making irreversible claims, it gives me a bit of WWIII-is-coming concerns. Both sides are failing to leave the door open to compromise and that genuinely scares me. Anyway, right now, Ukraine is not in as good of a position as it was in Fall 2022. Say Russia goes on some other major offensive and Ukraine eats their lunch a 2nd time? Negotiate. And in that case, very likely negotiate from a stronger position than Fall 2022, in which case the ongoing strategy would be a win. But I just don't think there's any fundamental common ground here when you use language like "how the RA is going to turn this around." The Russians are occupying territory they want. What is it they need to turn around, exactly? They seem very content. So I guess to answer your question, if I get into the Russians' head, I don't change much of anything. I let convicts exchange their lives for contacting Ukrainian positions and simply ramp artillery expenditure until the cows come home. If I'm operating from the assumption that Russia seeks conquest, then I declare war and roll in the rest of the army and see if NATO blinks while I prepare my nuclear bunker for a 20-year vacation.

The simplest point to defeating Russia is economic. I mean Russia collapses pretty much instantly if you target the economic throughputs it now goes through. The difficulty arises there because it would require the West to get ugly with the Asian markets and, to some degree, the rest of the planet in general. There are very powerful interests within those markets who would love to see the West self-immolate to battle Russia, btw. However, that is a much, much larger discussion and one I'm too tired to have now.

 

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Here is where...amongst the flummery...we get to brass tacks.

You are reducing the war in terms of resources to Russian industrial capacity vs Ukrainian industrial capacity. Any realistic assessment should be comparing Russian abilities to Ukraine's plus that of the nations who are providing support. In that case, the scales are heavily weighted in Ukraine's favor.

As to manpower, there too you make some fundamental mistakes.

First, gross numbers are a bad measure. Russia labors under highly inefficient logistical systems that eat up manpower. It's troops are in relative terms very badly equipped with less accurate systems, less advanced targeting at a lessor distance, poorly supplied, etc. History is replete with larger armies losing to smaller ones. Russia in 1917 springs to mind for some reason.

Second, the manpower pool a country possesses isn't remotely the same thing as what it can actually bring to a fight. Russia is an older country. That industrial capacity you overestimate needs workers. There are political constraints to limit who can be conscripted without destabilizing the state. How many you can minimally feed, arm and actually deliver in some sort of fighting condition factors in. And every single one of these conditions has been observed so far in the war on the Russia side. 

Fundamentals.

Good example... ISAF collectively had at least 15 times the population of Afghanistan, some of which was fighting against the Taliban.  As for GDP?  Holy crap, I don't even want to calculate that... 100s of times more?  Something like that.  By the simple logic of more = victory, then Afghanistan should have been easily won.

Same thing if we look at percentage of losses.  Afghanistan lost significant chunk of its population due to the war, the ISAF countries didn't even scratch towards 1%.

Yet the Taliban won the war because it fought in a way that the ISAF countries weren't able to handle.

Russia went into this way ahead of Ukraine and it got its ass handed to it mostly without Western aid.  Whatever advantages Russia had going into this war have taken a huge hit and are steadily declining relative to Ukraine.

Steve

[billbindc]

2 minutes ago, Khalerick said:

But I just don't think there's any fundamental common ground here when you use language like "how the RA is going to turn this around." The Russians are occupying territory they want. What is it they need to turn around, exactly? They seem very content.

This has got to be a bit. 

[Butschi]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

At this point I'm not sure enough of what we are arguing about to know if we agree or disagree

Steve

Fair enough.

[Battlefront.com]

44 minutes ago, Khalerick said:

FWIW, while I disagree with you here, I do think it could very well be the case of conquest now.

Your position that this war did not start out as a "war of conquest" stands in solid contrast to all the facts we have in front of us, including well documented research into captured documents.  For those of us truly paying attention to the right details, we saw this ahead of the war and were only surprised that Putin was stupid enough to give it a go.  Those who paying attention to the wrong details (most of the establishment) were surprised that Putin was stupid enough to give it a go AND that it didn't work.

It doesn't do your position any favors to come into a mature discussion, declare everybody wrong, then not bother to support your position.

Steve

[billbindc]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Your position that this war did not start out as a "war of conquest" stands in solid contrast to all the facts we have in front of us, including well documented research into captured documents.  For those of us truly paying attention to the right details, we saw this ahead of the war and were only surprised that Putin was stupid enough to give it a go.  Those who paying attention to the wrong details (most of the establishment) were surprised that Putin was stupid enough to give it a go AND that it didn't work.

It doesn't do your position any favors to come into a mature discussion, declare everybody wrong, then not bother to support your position.

Steve

Who you gonna believe...Khalerick, or the guy who launched the invasion and then overtly stated what it was intended to do? 

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putin-admits-ukraine-invasion-is-an-imperial-war-to-return-russian-land/

 

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, billbindc said:

This has got to be a bit. 

Yeah.  I had to check that I was on page 2013 of this thread to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped back 1800 or so pages.  It is as wrong now as it was back when it was first tried out and just as wrong as thinking this was anything other than a war of conquest by Putin's regime.

Steve

[Billy Ringo]

With reference to Russian industrial capacity....

In my experience, it takes 6-12 months before major supply chain disruptions really start affecting the economy.  My customers, (I work with large industrial supply, repair parts, etc. wholesalers) were able to leverage pipeline inventory, source inventory from one domestic location or another, cannibalize parts from assembly and/or production sources for about 6-12 months depending on the industry during Covid and the recent supply chain disruptions. Then it got ugly.

Russia may be getting to the end of that window before industrial production really starts taking hits.

That's basically a long winded way of saying, just because some Russian manufacturing sectors have been running for the past 12 months doesn't mean they will keep running at the same capacity.  Or at all.  And when one sector fails, every other sector dependent upon those products suffer as well.

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Khalerick said:

Russia humiliated itself in its retreats. That much is obvious. But that was then, and this is now. The war Russia was looking to “fight” in 2022 is not the far it is going to fight in 2023. Holding onto victories of yore does little. You actually kind of make the argument in your preamble there. Russia simply has vastly more industrial capacity and manpower than Ukraine. That’s really all there is to it. I think if Ukraine weren't fighting a democratic nation, then it could bleed their way to victory, but they're not. They're fighting Russia. And if Ukraine wants to engage in a long war, then Russia will oblige and Ukraine will pay for it dearly. This is why I think Ukraine should have sued for peace after the counter-offenses. All that initiative has been lost and now the Russians are creeping forward again and we don’t know exactly what their plans are now. I mean this is the part where also significant disagreements arise: I'm looking at 2023 trying to figure out what new things Russia's going to do. They're clearly planning something, and they're clearly not going away. Others are looking at 2023 like it's just going to be 2022 all over again, as if the Russians are just too dumb to learn and adapt. As I mentioned elsewhere as well, Russia now has had 1-full year to adjust its industries on a war footing. I don't think people really understand what that means while they debate and pull their hair out about a battalion or few of Leopards and Abrams.

Ok, so this is pretty much the crux of your entire argument as far as I can tell?  I mean if there is more please feel free to post it, again a few references or fact could be helpful.  Like for instance how big is Russian military industrial capacity?  How does that translate into military production?  How does that stack up with Ukraine's?  How does it stack up to western industrial production?  What is happening to Russian industrial production?  Hint, it does not look good:

https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/industrial-production#:~:text=Industrial Production in Russia averaged,percent in January of 2009.

Ok, back into my wheelhouse, the military situation.

"Victories of yore"...? we are talking last Nov.  So in 3 months of what has really been leg dry humping in the Donbas, the entire UA war machine, one that was able to conduct two simultaneous operational offensives over 500 kms apart while being hit by Russian operational strikes...is on the verge of being wiped out.  Or is in an untenable situation?  The UA has lost the initiative and can never get it back?

So here is where I won't be snide or take personal shots.  Instead I will say up front and simply: you have no idea what you are talking about.  Now if you are really interested in exploring and widening you knowledge base, stick around by all means.  If you here to promote unfounded points of view and insult everyone...well nature will take its course.  

I am not sure who you have been reading or listening to but my best advice is to stop because they don't know what they are talking about either.  Here is what Russia is not going to do because there is not pocket dimension that they can drive their military into and reform/rebuild it over 10 years - but only a few days in our time - and then drive it back out and actually change the course of this war: 

- They are not going to solve for the C4ISR asymmetry, which is absolutely killing them (literally).  In order to gain a level of parity they need to either expand the conflict dramatically and directly attack US ISR assets, or spend billions, compress time and space and invent a competitive ISR architecture in comparison to the US.  That is a tall order China cannot meet but that is what Russia will need to do in this war to turn it around.

- They are not going to solve for air superiority.  Closely linked to C4ISR, the inability for the Russian Air Force to get in this game and fight the war they need it to is nearly insurmountable.  The air denial being exerted in this war is pretty definitive.  Add to that the Russians never really had a CAS doctrine to speak of, so there is that.

- They are not going to solve for operational pre-conditions.  The Russian military has demonstrated again and again a failure to effectively dominate the: information/communications infrastructure of Ukraine (and now it is been hardened and integrated with the west), transportation infrastructure to effectively cut off western support and sustainment, and disrupt the linkages between military strategic and political decision making - i.e. shock.  They also have not demonstrated an ability to establish effective levels of force protection - we see that nearly daily.

- They are not going to solve for logistics.  This has been the major problem for the RA and the UA/Western actions have made it nothing but worse.  At this point Russian logistics is functioning but has severely been eroded.  They have had to disperse logistical nodes and their losses on logistical equipment is approaching horrendous.  More facts: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html...and these are simply insane numbers btw.

This is the operational stuff and it does not even begin to address the effects of UA corrosive warfare and precision asymmetry at tactical levels.

At the strategic level, as we have gone on at length about, Russia has a lot of larger problems.  Force Generation is likely the biggest one.  Russia can produce all the hardware it can but it is useless unless they can turn it, and people into functioning fighting units and formations.  We have seen indications that Russian FG is occurring, likely in better order than we had hoped, but it is no where near what the west is providing the UA with.  We know the RA cannibalized its training schools last spring-summer, which can damage force generation for years.  They have been able to turn out massed dismounted infantry but this is 2023, we have gone on at length at the challenges of training mechanized forces, let alone the number of specialist required to fix those four big operational points above.  Force Generation-wise the RA will need to demonstrate that it can create divisions that are enabled comparative to the UA, and we have seen no evidence of this. 

And then we get into the political level, and have gone on at length at Putin's constraints and restraints.  I just posted an ISW analysis of his risk calculus which outlines some of this.

So against that you have..."well Russia is really big and bad".   The first step to getting out of the Dunning-Kruger hole is to recognize that your are in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

[keas66]

12 minutes ago, Khalerick said:

 

I agree, forecasts in 2022 predicted Russia's economy to virtually flatline. I myself actually assumed it would and thought Russia was in absolute dire straits when they militarily screwed the pooch. If they were convulsing like they were in 2014, there's just no way they could have a timetable to adjust militarily in Ukraine. I mean, I think that's just a fact, albeit one in an alternate universe heh.

But their economy didn't buckle. Hence why forecasts change. I don't think the impact this time around has been worse when the forecasters peg Russia for greater growth than Europe in 2023. These are still forecasts, though, so who knows. Forecasts of 2022 were completely wrong. Forecasts of 2023 could also end up completely wrong. But I'm just saying what they say, which is that Russia is clearly not wilting like they should be. I actually don't know how much of an argument is to be had here beyond just -- gulp -- giving those dirty economists their due.

 

I'm not sure what economic discussion of the occupied territories are supposed to concern. I never disagreed that the status of these territories is currently poor. That only makes sense after they've been in conflict for years and have had outside subversion 24/7 from a now-invading neighbor. Lost territory is simply that, lost territory. It's just not good and I don't see just cause to argue otherwise. Providing they keep those territories, Russia will make use of them in their own way. Ukrainian territories being enveloped into Russia's general socioeconomic strata isn't exactly like oil falling into a bucket of water.

 

As for the conclusion or I guess my position, it's not negotiate "now." It's negotiate when you take the initiative. Two different things. Diplomacy and negotiation require compromise, and compromise is best had when you have bargaining chips. I said this a long time ago, or at least implied it, but today's statesmen leave a lot to be desired. When I see both sides making irreversible claims, it gives me a bit of WWIII-is-coming concerns. Both sides are failing to leave the door open to compromise and that genuinely scares me. Anyway, right now, Ukraine is not in as good of a position as it was in Fall 2022. Say Russia goes on some other major offensive and Ukraine eats their lunch a 2nd time? Negotiate. And in that case, very likely negotiate from a stronger position than Fall 2022, in which case the ongoing strategy would be a win. But I just don't think there's any fundamental common ground here when you use language like "how the RA is going to turn this around." The Russians are occupying territory they want. What is it they need to turn around, exactly? They seem very content. So I guess to answer your question, if I get into the Russians' head, I don't change much of anything. I let convicts exchange their lives for contacting Ukrainian positions and simply ramp artillery expenditure until the cows come home. If I'm operating from the assumption that Russia seeks conquest, then I declare war and roll in the rest of the army and see if NATO blinks while I prepare my nuclear bunker for a 20-year vacation.

The simplest point to defeating Russia is economic. I mean Russia collapses pretty much instantly if you target the economic throughputs it now goes through. The difficulty arises there because it would require the West to get ugly with the Asian markets and, to some degree, the rest of the planet in general. There are very powerful interests within those markets who would love to see the West self-immolate to battle Russia, btw. However, that is a much, much larger discussion and one I'm too tired to have now.

 

You seem to be basing all of your arguments on one IMF report  that all is rosy with the Russian Economy  ?

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-imf-forecasts/

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

Just now, billbindc said:

Who you gonna believe...Khalerick, or the guy who launched the invasion and then overtly stated what it was intended to do? 

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putin-admits-ukraine-invasion-is-an-imperial-war-to-return-russian-land/

 

Reminds me of the time I was arguing with a Marine in 2004-2006 timeframe that there were no WMD in Iraq.  I cited the White House's own report that there were no WMDs and I was called a "traitor" for my efforts.  Ah, fun times.

Steve