How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[sburke]

Drone attack damages Russian oil pipeline facility hundreds of miles from Ukraine (yahoo.com)

Ukrainian drones attacked and damaged oil pipeline infrastructure hundreds of miles inside Russia on Saturday, Russian officials said.

One of the pipelines reportedly attacked was the Soviet-built Druzhba pipeline in the Tver province of northwest Russia, 300 miles from the border with Ukraine.

“There were no casualties. Emergency services are currently working at the scene,” the Tver government said in a statement.

[Fenris]

Interesting.  Does make me wonder though, is "drone attack" the new "smoking accident" for crappy old russian infrastructure?

[FancyCat]

 

 

[Bulletpoint]

Strange how they keep doing these ineffective drone attacks... Surely most of those slow moving drones are being shot down by AA guns and not missiles? Which means they won't ever get exhausted.

According to the BBC, they have launched more than 14 drone attacks in this month alone. If they had saved up the drones and launched them all in one go, then maybe they could have overwhelmed the defences, but it seems like they are just wasting their drones piecemeal.

[Butschi]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The general consensus turned out to be correct, which was that Erdogan would not win the election.  And guess what?  He did not.  At least in the primary election.  Now that the runoff is over he won, but just barely.  Considering all the tricks his party played to get this result, it would seem that he would have been defeated in a fully honest election.

I didn't follow this discussion, just stopping by to say: Come on, that is a bit cheap and you usually do much better than that. I think in this context by "winning the election" almost everyone meant "becoming president". Also, saying he did not win in the primary election is stretching the truth a bit. With 49.5% Erdogan had the most votes and almost managed to achieve an absolute majority. That is quite a feat if you compare it to, say, Macron, who got only 27.8% in the primary election in 2022. The primary election isn't meant to be won outright, that's what the runoff is there for, and it it doesn't make the winner any less democratically legitimized. True, 52% vs 48% isn't a large margin but if you go by popular vote, looking at the last two decades, almost all US presidents won by a similar or even smaller margin. Biden vs Trump was 51% vs 47%, Trump vs Clinton 47% vs 48% (!), Obama vs Romney 51% vs 48%, Obama vs McCain 53% vs 46%, Bush vs Kerry 51% vs 48%.

You are right about the tricks Erdogan pulled off, though I'm not too sure how much if a role they played. Germany has a large Turkish community and people here have free access to all sorts of information. They still voted 67% for Erdogan.

[womble]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

Strange how they keep doing these ineffective drone attacks... Surely most of those slow moving drones are being shot down by AA guns and not missiles? Which means they won't ever get exhausted.

According to the BBC, they have launched more than 14 drone attacks in this month alone. If they had saved up the drones and launched them all in one go, then maybe they could have overwhelmed the defences, but it seems like they are just wasting their drones piecemeal.

It's got to be something to do with C&C. They can't control/deconflict larger waves. Or they're just saving them up til "about 50 birds" and flinging them in as fast as they can make them before the Swiss lift their embargo on Gepard ammo.

[Billy Ringo]

From the cheap seats regarding Putin:

If anything, the opposite: he's least able to make decisions when they're hard 1/ https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89826

Coupled with Stanovaya's observation that his belief in being "right" will eventually lead to his ultimate goals without having to intercede or take certain actions, would make one believe that he would have a difficult time pulling the trigger on going nuclear.

THAT would seem to be the ultimate hard decision.  And based on her evaluation, that's not one Putin would be likely to make. 

Hope she's right on that one.

==============

On this Memorial Day, a solemn thank you and reverence for those who gave all to preserve the liberties we have in the United States.

 

 

Edited May 29, 2023 by Billy Ringo
Memorial Day

[Beleg85]

11 Iskanders flying over Kyiv today. Heavy stuff.

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Butschi said:

I didn't follow this discussion, just stopping by to say: Come on, that is a bit cheap and you usually do much better than that. I think in this context by "winning the election" almost everyone meant "becoming president". Also, saying he did not win in the primary election is stretching the truth a bit. With 49.5% Erdogan had the most votes and almost managed to achieve an absolute majority. That is quite a feat if you compare it to, say, Macron, who got only 27.8% in the primary election in 2022. The primary election isn't meant to be won outright, that's what the runoff is there for, and it it doesn't make the winner any less democratically legitimized. True, 52% vs 48% isn't a large margin but if you go by popular vote, looking at the last two decades, almost all US presidents won by a similar or even smaller margin. Biden vs Trump was 51% vs 47%, Trump vs Clinton 47% vs 48% (!), Obama vs Romney 51% vs 48%, Obama vs McCain 53% vs 46%, Bush vs Kerry 51% vs 48%.

You are right about the tricks Erdogan pulled off, though I'm not too sure how much if a role they played. Germany has a large Turkish community and people here have free access to all sorts of information. They still voted 67% for Erdogan.

Not a cheap shot at all.  In the day or two before the election there were many that thought Erdogan was going to win outright.  After the final results of the initial election were determined the estimate was he'd win the runoff because the 5% that went to the next highest candidate would go to Erdogan

Discussion here wasn't detailed, but there were opinions expressed that said he would not.  And nobody tried to compare it to the results in other elections or to say that Erdogan didn't have a huge base of support.  I don't think anybody here, or elsewhere, thought it was going to be anything other than close.  With only a couple of % separating the two it really came down to turnout and election manipulation.

Steve

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Not a cheap shot at all.  In the day or two before the election there were many that thought Erdogan was going to win outright.  After the final results of the initial election were determined the estimate was he'd win the runoff because the 5% that went to the next highest candidate would go to Erdogan

Discussion here wasn't detailed, but there were opinions expressed that said he would not.  And nobody tried to compare it to the results in other elections or to say that Erdogan didn't have a huge base of support.  I don't think anybody here, or elsewhere, thought it was going to be anything other than close.  With only a couple of % separating the two it really came down to turnout and election manipulation.

Steve

Surprised there was any doubt at all: https://www.duvarenglish.com/turkey-ranks-103rd-among-167-countries-in-global-democracy-index-news-61772

Of course it does not matter who was right or wrong - this is not grade school.  What matters are the geopolitical implications both within Turkey and outside as a result of this outcome.

[FancyCat]

In the middle of a thread detailing the huge amount of awards and decorations established by Defense Minister Shoigu, evidence for Russia fully intending on seizing Crimea is revealed by Shoigu.

 

[Harmon Rabb]

Poland says it will close border to freight vehicles from Belarus and Russia (Reuters)

[The_MonkeyKing]

 

pretty clear DPICM to me

Edited May 29, 2023 by The_MonkeyKing

[Harmon Rabb]

New video of a Javelin in action.

[billbindc]

21 hours ago, panzermartin said:

Just a reminder that not everything we certainly, firmly believe in this forum turns out right. Erdogan won the turkish elections once again.

Absolutely. That said, the AKP engineered the vote totals by a couple of points up for Erdogan and two to three down for Kiricdaroglu so don't feel too badly about being wrong on this one.

[cesmonkey]

57 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

 

pretty clear DPICM to me

Suppose the Ukrainians fired some cluster munitions they captured from Russian forces.  Would there be any observable differences between those and DPICM?

[danfrodo]

Not that anyone wants this, but here's my thoughts since the fronts are relatively quiet today.

1.  How will Prig die?  We should start a poll on this.  He's rather high profile for a balcony accident.  'Heart attack' is possible.  But why not get some popular outrage going?  I think an FSB bomb that is then claimed to have been planted by UKR 'terrorists' to take a out a great RU hero.  That's my vote.

2.  Where will the main effort be?  We all think the south, it certainly is the richest target, and I think so also.  But UKR doing a nice job of trying to pull RU forces away from there w attacks in RU proper, plus attacks around Bakhmut.  Meanwhile, UKR doing deep strikes on HQs, barracks, & logistics very far behind RU lines.  Putin's head has to be spinning, assuming someone is telling him.

3.  The strikes on Kyiv are dreadful and despicable but militarily it does have a positive side:  all those missiles weren't hitting things that could disrupt the UKR campaigning season.  So in the end it's just more murder but does not hinder what's coming.

4. videos are anecdotal, of course, but we're seeing lots of videos showing that warfare is still up close and personal like WW1.  All the fancy weapons give one side huge advantages but in the end still gotta did the rats out of the holes.  Why don't they surrender???  RU soldiers just cowering in holes like that will save them when the trench is clearly overrun??  Dude, wave a white flag!!!

5.  what happens to RU prisoners upon return to the motherland?  there's been lots of exchanges.  Why exchange if RU is just going to shoot or jail them?  So I am guessing they are put right back into the line?

6.  Sunflowers are sprouting in my yard, multiple locations, some unexpected.  Clearly this is an omen, presaging the fulfilling of prophecy.

[billbindc]

21 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So if one looks at Subversive/Political Warfare Doctrine to my eyes Russia was attempting a Step 4 - Create Puppets.  This can be done covertly or overtly, they went for overt.  Normally one has already done Steps 1-3 (Mapping, Exploit Fractures, Build Cancers) to a point where you have already gotten your own people in the right places and hijacked the central nervous system of the society.  Step 4 can happen as a sponsored coup a la Crimea/Donbas or something a little more aggressive but the key component is a rapid fall of existing macro social structures that you have eroded to dysfunctional and replacement with your own, which are often just waiting to step in.

So to my eyes this is less about “Grey Zoning It” and more about moving forward in a Grey Zone strategy well before you have set the conditions.  Russia did almost zero shaping internationally as far as we can tell.  We had months of “we are only on exercise” which we even saw here when the pro-Russian crowd weighed in.  But no real mechanisms that would sow seeds of western doubt beyond some clumsy attempts.  Clearly whatever they had ready in the wings was nowhere near ready to backstop the move. The Ukrainian military was clearly not on board and neither was the people space in Ukraine itself.

So if one tries for Step 4 before establishing conditions you get exactly this: Grey Zone gone Dark Zone, because you have not fundamentally undecided the issues both outside and inside Ukraine enough.  Your opponents are not under effective Reflexive Control.  While at the same time you are not set up for Dark Zone open warfare.  From a professional point of view this was sloppy as hell and a sign of serious disconnects within the halls of power in Russia - a fact that has been borne out by prosecution of this war itself.  

Russia was basically running into the night without a flashlight at that point.  So high on their own supply that progressive unreality set in and all sorts of assumptions became hard facts in the calculus…right up to the point reality came out of the dark and bit their noses off.

What's really interesting is that we would not have made many of conclusions about conditions within Ukraine before the invasion happened. Russia had spent decades running extensive information and influence operations in Ukraine before this war. There was plenty of evidence that significant state level actors were suborned (see Medvedchuk, Victor), that parts of the the Ukrainian intelligence services were doubled (https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-double-agent-russian-invasion-fsb-intelligence-operatives/), etc. Moscow certainly believed it had night vision. 

The big question is why all of that effort didn't work or suddenly came to nothing when push came to shove. The simplest answer is that while Russia was operating in a conspiratorial fashion, the actual politics/reactions of normal Ukrainians was a freight train going in the opposite direction.

[Nastypastie]

11 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

Suppose the Ukrainians fired some cluster munitions they captured from Russian forces.  Would there be any observable differences between those and DPICM?

Looks exactly like these from December. Israeli supposedly.

 

[Astrophel]

The one positive from the Erdogan result is that he absolutely owns the victory.  Had the opposition won they would have been faced with the economic car crash that Turkey is today while speaking with several voices about an intractable problem and with Erdogan's united party breathing down their necks.  How long the new government would have lasted is anyone's guess but it is unlikely to have served a full term - Erdogan would have been waiting in the wings for a hero's return.

Now Erdogan owns fully the problem he created.  There is a record current account deficit and the reserves have been used to finance vote winning giveaways.  The currency continues to sink.  Inflation is running away.  The european market Turkey was equipping to serve is retreating further and there are plenty of Eastern European countries prepared to take over the opportunity that was Turkey's - including Hungary.  With Erdogan at the helm these problems are not solvable without becoming further entrammelled with UAE/Saudi as financiers - at least in my opinion.

What is Nato to do?  My instinct is to confront Turkey immediately with a demand to allow Swedish and Ukrainian accession or leave.  Erdogan will concede in my judgement while the Turkish electorate will be made sharply aware that Nato membership under Erdogan is not a given.

When the Turkish economy implodes finally there will be another election.  Even so I am not optimistic about Turkey.  There is no democratic tradition.  There is an unhealthy admiration for strongmen leaders.  And there is a fanatic adherence among a substantial community for islamic values.  People tell me here in Netherlands that even third generation Turkish immigrants will not take a mortgage out of Islamic principle.  Two out of Three Dutch immigrant Turks voted for Erdogan as a strong and reliable leader.  When it comes to democracy and Turkey there is substantial religious and cultural inertia to overcome.  Perhaps we should leave it for another century?

Edited May 29, 2023 by Astrophel
clarification - immigrant

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, FancyCat said:

In the middle of a thread detailing the huge amount of awards and decorations established by Defense Minister Shoigu, evidence for Russia fully intending on seizing Crimea is revealed by Shoigu.

Interesting find. On other side, it is not uncommon in Russia to print medal ahead of event and add dates later. Probably tons of similar stuff was prepared for "quick liberation" of Kyiv.

 

Here another part of "Team Red" analysis by Polish colonel. May be worth to translate and look on, as there is lot of details there regarding Russian commanders and dispositions their units. This time group Center, under gen. Mordvichev, resurrected from the dead. Note me if somebody want to translate this or that concrete label.

 

Edited May 29, 2023 by Beleg85

[cesmonkey]

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/2023-05-29-regeringen-tilfoejer-ekstra-milliarder-til-ukraine-fond

Quote

According to Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (M), Denmark has ambitions to be the largest contributor to the war in Ukraine.

 

[Artkin]

Wow 2.6 billion from Denmark. 

[womble]

26 minutes ago, Astrophel said:

Two out of Three Dutch immigrant Turks voted for Erdogan as a strong and reliable leader.

I wonder whether expat Turks are keener on Erdogan because they don't have to live in his mess. He talks a great show, even croons a little, but the corrupt/shortsighted pandering to the demands of his core electorate for free/cheap stuff is going to come back and bite him in the ***, with any luck.

 

28 minutes ago, Astrophel said:

What is Nato to do?  My instinct is to confront Turkey immediately with a demand to allow Swedish and Ukrainian accession or leave.

And risk him running into Putin's arms? The man's almost as delusional a narcissist as Vlad is, and has all the autocratic tendencies. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that he cuts his nose off to spite his face. Then you have to do the same to Hungary, with the same, though slightly lower risk.

[The_MonkeyKing]

19 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/2023-05-29-regeringen-tilfoejer-ekstra-milliarder-til-ukraine-fond

 

I hope the big countries like the USA, France, and Germany are starting to get some pressure to match the pre capita commitments of many small/medium European countries.