How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Vic4]

China's Xi calls Ukraine's Zelensky
 

https://apple.news/Aq63eoRPhTsqmIHpQ-sW-UA

 

Would the West and the US in particular ever openly support the optics of a Chinese brokered “peace” negotiation? 

Edited April 26, 2023 by Vic4

[sburke]

3 minutes ago, Vic4 said:

China's Xi calls Ukraine's Zelensky
 

https://apple.news/Aq63eoRPhTsqmIHpQ-sW-UA

 

Would the West and the US in particular ever openly support the optics of a Chinese brokered “peace” negotiation? 

IF there was actually something worth it to Kiev, it wouldn't be our decision.  We'd have to support it.

Do I expect China to ever propose anything acceptable to Kiev?  About as much as I expect I'll pick the winning lottery ticket (hint: I don't play the lottery)

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

I don't pretend to have any idea how Ukraine will conduct their offensive. But I'm beginning to form a picture of just how ill-prepared Russia is to receive it.

I agree with that conclusion.  Pretty much everything that should be happening to challenge Ukraine's offensive has not been.  The biggest was frittering away 10s of thousands of men and hundreds of pieces of valuable equipment over the course of the failed winter offensive. 

2 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

ISW's April 23 report suggests that all, or nearly all, Russian units are committed to the frontline. That means they have no reserves. Apparently they have been seriously demechanized, and many units may be relegated to moving on foot. They are short on both personnel and equipment. Their units are fragmented and staffed by undertrained personnel. They haven't demonstrated an ability to coordinate large multi-brigade maneuvers in months.

The Russian military seems to be in a very sorry state even defensively.  You touched on some of the points, but I'll summarize (in no particular order):

• no centralized higher level command structure
• fractured loyalties of the fighting forces.  Standard military, LPR, DPR, BARS, mobiks, PMCs, and regional volunteer units all have different concepts of who they are fighting for.  We could even add in the standing tensions between VDV, Spetsnaz, Naval, and regular Army units
• no trust between soldiers and higher levels of command
• it's hard to think that Russian morale could be worse now than last year, but I suspect it is in places.  Instead of resting, recuperating, and reorganizing through the winter there we saw 3 months of futile suicide attacks.  That certainly doesn't give soldiers much hope for the future
• shortages of major components of warfare, from munitions to tanks
• what the Russians do have is more often than not outclassed by what Ukraine has
• navy that can't do much
• airforce that can't do much
• difficulty replacing anything complex (especially electronics based) that is lost due to sanctions and/or long build times
• unit command structures that were flawed from the start are now in ruins due to the extremely high losses of officers and experienced enlisted
• little to no training of new units on anything but the extreme basics (and even then maybe not)
• no demonstrated ability to successfully conduct tactical maneuvers above platoon level worth mentioning, which is going to be a real problem if they have to engage in a mobile defense against battalion sized formations
• all reserves appear to be tapped out.  There doesn't even appear to be much of anything left for individual replacements either as Russia has seemingly formed them into units and sent them to the front
• logistics that are highly susceptible to disruption at any time of Ukraine's choosing
• ISR and supporting systems that started out insufficient are now likely worse than the start of the war due to losses of trained personnel and equipment
• situation on the home front is under enormous stress and nobody, including the Kremlin, knows how much more stress it can take before it breaks down

There's probably a half dozen more things I could think of if I spent more time on it, but the above list is sufficient to establish that Russia isn't well prepared to defend itself.  Sure, it does have defensive lines set up, however it doesn't seem Russia has the forces required to keep those defenses from being breached.

The biggest challenge for Russia is going to be the manpower and equipment shortages.  Even if Ukraine's offensive starts out slow and grinding, Russia has very little it can throw into the fight without degrading some other area.  Which, probably, is something Ukraine has built into its planning.  Which gets back to something I said many pages ago... Ukraine will obligate Russia to decide which areas it is going to lose because it doesn't have the manpower to hold everything.

The only solution to this manpower shortage is to do another mobilization.  Russia appears to suspect it will be a lot harder to get people into uniform than the last one, given the large amount of effort they have put into the "call up" process.  It is also pretty clear that they are looking to tap into pools of mobiks they have previously been afraid to touch, such as students and ethnic Russians in urban areas.

On the equipment side, we have seen so much evidence that Russia is scraping the bottom of its barrel to get things into the front and still not satisfying the needs.  De-mechanization of units, old model tanks with modest (if any) updates, ever dwindling control assets (EW, CB, etc.), lack of guided AT weapons, etc.

To summarize... Russia is going to lose a lot of men and equipment in short order as soon as the counter offensive starts.  Since it has nothing to replace it with, mobiks will need to be rounded up quickly and sent to the front without training just like last year.  This gives Ukraine a very big opportunity to seize a lot of ground before the masses of mobiks clogs up the front enough to slow advances.  If Russia had already mobilized 100,000 mobiks and stuck them into Ukraine ahead of the advance, maybe things would turn out differently.  Thankfully that isn't an option on the table.

Steve

[billbindc]

34 minutes ago, sburke said:

IF there was actually something worth it to Kiev, it wouldn't be our decision.  We'd have to support it.

Do I expect China to ever propose anything acceptable to Kiev?  About as much as I expect I'll pick the winning lottery ticket (hint: I don't play the lottery)

Ultimately, it is...or we would strongly want it to be...Ukraine's peace to make. If China induced Russia to pull out and Ukraine got it's territory back, obviously we would go along if that worked for Zelensky. The odds of that happening are virtually nil. China will want its ne'er do well proxy to get something out of it and it will want a piece of the pie itself. That's unlikely to work out well.

Edited April 26, 2023 by billbindc

[Haiduk]

One more heavy interceptor MiG-31 crashed in Murmansk oblast. Pilots are ejected, but got heavy injuries. 

 

Edited April 26, 2023 by Haiduk

[Bulletpoint]

23 minutes ago, sburke said:

IF there was actually something worth it to Kiev, it wouldn't be our decision.  We'd have to support it.

That's the official line, but I think it's more the other way around. If you wanted Kyiv to take a peace offer, they wouldn't have much choice but to accept. At least if the alternative was no more weapons.

[dan/california]

12 hours ago, JonS said:

Yes, but they aren't acting as lawyers when in the role of lawmakers. They don't get to set the rules because they're lawyers. They get to set them because they're lawmakers. Edit: and the lawmakers-who-trained-as-lawyers don't get to ensure the rules are followed either, because of that pesky old separation of powers thing - the executive and legislative branches aren't supposed to mess with the independent judiciary, etc.

The more important point, though, is that if you jettison your principles as soon as things get a bit tough, then you don't really have any principles. The reason 'we' get to tell ourselves that we're better than 'them' is because we at least try to hold ourselves to the rules we set. If we ditch those rules - and principles - then we're really just them wearing a fake nose and glasses.

Which raise the question about which rules reflect deeply held and important principals, and which ones were the result of successful Russian influence operations. I have an opinion about DPICM, you are certainly entitled to yours. 

[BlackMoria]

I think the reality is allies to Ukraine will have a say or input but ultimately the Ukrainian government makes the call.   Note, yes, what ever their decision is will have consequences.   This level of decision always does.

[kevinkin]

9 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'll summarize (in no particular order):

If the UA leadership has logically come to the same conclusion, then their planning is very much simplified. The wicked witch is dead. Maybe to a point were Crimea is 100% in play sooner rather than later. If they think the RA is so brittle than it will collapse when challenged to fight large, we might have to begin to think the progress of the offensive (if somewhat "slow" to the world's eyes) is timed  - in part - by non-military considerations. Perhaps to the point where Russia is slowly press out of Ukraine so not to have a chance of some form of desperate escalation and also keeping China out of the picture as much as possible. 

[MikeyD]

I expect Xi called Zelensky because that Chinese diplomat last week yammering about the sovereignty of former Soviet satellite state had put China into a diplomatic position they didn't want to be in. There's no profit in half the European consumer market being pissed at you.

[Beleg85]

Gen. Cavoli claims that nearly all promised vehicles are already in Ukraine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/world/europe/ukraine-counteroffensive-combat-vehicles.html

[Centurian52]

On 4/24/2023 at 1:26 PM, Jiggathebauce said:

To quote a summary of the speech given by a user who shared this to me originally:

"It appears a Russian Naval officers mutiny is being announced, with the intent of restoring a true Tsar to succeed Putin. An assembly of Russian officers said that if their leader comes to power, there will be fundamental changes.

The points:

"personnel revolution";

lustration of the enemies of the people;

"degreasing" the oligarchs;

severing diplomatic relations with all hostile countries;

an end to all immigration

the abolition of the free circulation of the dollar and the euro;

growth of the population of the Russian Federation to one billion.

While this may not lead to internal war or conflict right away, it is certainly seditious. The new Supreme Ruler of Russia and future candidate for President of Russia 2024 has been nominated from within the Officers' Assembly: Captain Ivan Otrakovsky.

Otrakovsky has a long history of membership in far right nationalist groups and associations with breakaway sect of the Orthodox Church. If he doesn't find a window big enough in the coming months, with the help of what looks to be significant military backing, this could very well be the new Tsar of the most horrifyingly dystopian country on the planet. Brace for impact."

 

Sounds far right to me

This is incredible. What exactly do they intend to feed those 1 billion people after they've cut off diplomatic relations with every country on Earth except for Iran, North Korea, and China? Does anyone know how many calories are in an average clump of Russian dirt?

I don't doubt they can reach a billion people after cutting off immigration and returning their economy to the stone age. In a scenario this dystopian I assume they have Krieg style cloning vats.

[BlackMoria]

21 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Gen. Cavoli claims that nearly all promised vehicles are already in Ukraine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/26/world/europe/ukraine-counteroffensive-combat-vehicles.html

Then it nearly time.   The hall is rented.  The band is engaged.   Now its time to see if the russians can dance.

Or in other words....

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War!

Edited April 26, 2023 by BlackMoria

[dan/california]

39 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

If the UA leadership has logically come to the same conclusion, then their planning is very much simplified. The wicked witch is dead. Maybe to a point were Crimea is 100% in play sooner rather than later. If they think the RA is so brittle than it will collapse when challenged to fight large, we might have to begin to think the progress of the offensive (if somewhat "slow" to the world's eyes) is timed  - in part - by non-military considerations. Perhaps to the point where Russia is slowly press out of Ukraine so not to have a chance of some form of desperate escalation and also keeping China out of the picture as much as possible. 

There is also a non zero chance all of the down beat information/outlook is some combination of standard CYA and an info op to delay the next round of forcible mobilization by Putin as long as possible. 

https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1651256491460968450

A lot of people on this board, and other places , think their is a real chance the Russian defenses just dissolve. If they do Ukraine is going to pursue with maximum speed and violence until something makes them stop. There is a best case, ok a super duper case, scenario where Russia simply abandons the land bridge, and tries to hold the choke points at the top of Crimea, and a north south line from from Mariupol to Donetsk City and then their current lines from that point north.  Who knows if that would be enough to push the whole Russian Government off a cliff. I have been somewhat vocal about support for Ukraine being finely adjusted to produce predictable outcomes. How is that for neutral phrasing? But there are too many moving parts here for that level of control. If Russian morale and and command and control shatter on a broad enough front, and their logistics are severed at both ends of the land bridge, even third tier Ukrainian forces, mounted on pick ups and tractors, will be enough to keep the pressure on.

Worth keeping in mind that eliminating the land bridge greatly reduces the frontage, it is an interesting question which side that helps more. 

Also, trying to cross post something from twitter didn't work the way it usually does, anybody else having an issue?

 

Edited April 26, 2023 by dan/california

[Beleg85]

17 minutes ago, BlackMoria said:

Then it nearly time.   The hall is rented.  The band is engaged.   Now it time to see if the russians can dance.

Or in other words....

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War!

Last hearings of him and articles citing several other US officials suggest rather careful assessment regarding Ukrainian chances. The same general admitted Russian military today is larger than before the war (that's rather obvious), lost only ca. 80 planes and one ship and while losing some precious initiall potential, it's far from broken force. This could be influence from Republican politicans asking him, though, I only read excerpts from talks.

Quite frankly we have so little data it is almost pointless to predict at this point how things will go. The last solid assessment comes from leaked document 1,5 month ago.

42 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

I expect Xi called Zelensky because that Chinese diplomat last week yammering about the sovereignty of former Soviet satellite state had put China into a diplomatic position they didn't want to be in. There's no profit in half the European consumer market being pissed at you.

This could accelerate call, but It is doubtfull most powerful guy on planet (in his own eyes) called pr. Zelensky to apologise for words of mere ambassador to different country. Not this scale of things.

Edited April 26, 2023 by Beleg85

[womble]

54 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

• airforce that can't do much

"Not much" ain't "nothin'"... though that may be true for the "not much" the RU navy can contribute

The RU tacair has made a decisive nuisance of itself a couple-few times that I vaguely remember (a roughly equal number to the times UKR have tried to punch hard with armour), and was a major thorn in the side of the Kherson offensive, IIRC. Hopefully, there are now enough AD systems and munitions in theatre to keep the RU birds at an ineffective arm's length from any spearheads/bridgeheads, or enough ballistic missiles to do what airpower dominance ought to do and let UKR destroy the RU airframes on the ground.

Or maybe it's all going to be drones and corrosion, but the vehicles that have been provided are surely supposed to be good for something...

The air denial environment this war has thrown up is somewhat novel, I think, and its effects are going to vary wildly as the AD environment, locally and theatre-wide. ATACMS would make great strides in rocket artillery replacing airstrikes in cutting the RU strength on the tarmac. It seems strange that no one has managed to hammer out a protocol where such long-ranged things are only used on "non-contentious" targets (without unacceptable direct target approval by the US). The benefits to both sides (UKR and US) should be incentive to be able to work something out.

 

[JonS]

3 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Lawyers are inextricably woven into both the creation of our laws and their enforcement & adjudication. In the USA, they are often the very same persons, lawyers in different phases of their careers

Well, yeah? Some lawyers become lawmakers. Some lawyers become judges. Some sportspeople become coaches or sports administrators. Some workers become managers. Some doctors become specialists. Some doctors become hospital administrators. That's what people do - go where their experience and training lead them.

[Centurian52]

On 4/25/2023 at 3:28 AM, The_Capt said:

I strongly suspect that the US is working very hard to engineer a just-soft-enough landing for Russia in this war.

I wonder if this strategy might backfire. I don't think there is any possibility of a soft landing for Russia. But the longer this war lasts, the more casualties Russia takes, the more Russian equipment is destroyed, the longer sanctions remain in full effect, the more time other countries have to adapt to new trade relationships that exclude Russia altogether, the harder the landing will be for Russia.

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, womble said:

The benefits to both sides (UKR and US) should be incentive to be able to work something out.

I could care less who denies what for the next fifty years as long every Russian airbase in Crimea is nothing but smoking, cratered wreckage.

Ukraine has ALREADY been reported to have pulled back on various operations inside Russia at the "request" of the U.S., denying that Ukraine is submitting target list for approval seems trivial by comparison.

 

Quote

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/24/discord-leaks-moscow-strikes-ukraine/

 

[sburke]

4 minutes ago, JonS said:

Well, yeah? Some lawyers become lawmakers. Some lawyers become judges. Some sportspeople become coaches or sports administrators. Some workers become managers. Some doctors become specialists. Some doctors become hospital administrators. That's what people do - go where their experience and training lead them.

some comedians become politicians and then have to lead their nation in a fight for survival, wait what?  

[dan/california]

4 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

I wonder if this strategy might backfire. I don't think there is any possibility of a soft landing for Russia. But the longer this war lasts, the more casualties Russia takes, the more Russian equipment is destroyed, the longer sanctions remain in full effect, the more time other countries have to adapt to new trade relationships that exclude Russia altogether, the harder the landing will be for Russia.

One hundred percent agreement. Losing fast is in the best interest of virtually every single Russian outside of the MOD building, and the Kremlin.

[Centurian52]

On 4/25/2023 at 7:34 AM, paxromana said:

It would be even better if the crew would simply run away from the Ukrainian summer offensive and the Ukrainians could have it parade in the streets of Kiev on world news ... and see the Russians try to spin that ...

My gut tells me that the Russians will never deploy T-14s to Ukraine. They can't get them out of the prototype stage, which tells me that they are either too expensive to go to full production, or there are still too many unsolved problems with the design to move out of the prototype phase. That means they are probably either too expensive to risk in combat, or there are too many unsolved problems for them to be effective in combat. But a part of me really wishes they would deploy them. Capturing a T-14 would be fantastic. I'm sure we'd get some great intelligence out of it, although I'm sure we'd also find that it isn't quite as capable as the Russian's claimed (which would be great for propaganda value).

[Centurian52]

On 4/25/2023 at 9:51 AM, dan/california said:

The Chinese are going to shove full autonomy into drones as fast as they physically/technically can. They idea that they will have moral qualms about it is laughable. At some point we are going to have to have a conversation with the lawyers, or just lose. Not that big an issue for this war, but it is going to loom rather large in the next one.

I do think war is headed towards fully autonomous systems. But I don't think we are going to see it anytime soon. Even 6th gen fighter programs are only going as far as manned-unmanned teaming. I think fully autonomous systems are still another two or three generations down the road. AI just isn't there yet.

Edited April 26, 2023 by Centurian52

[Centurian52]

On 4/25/2023 at 10:56 AM, Battlefront.com said:

The survivors should have retreated and tried again later.  It's like CM's AI carrying on with a plan because that's what it was scripted to do, not because there's some reason to think it might work.

I'm starting to think the CM AI is pretty realistic when it is controlling Soviet, Syrian, or Russian forces.

[Fenris]

Example of some poor conditions. Translation says Kremenskoe, doesn't say when, probably in the past week I suppose.