How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

No. Like in every other country "the Turks" is already oversimplifying things. Most Turkish expats in western Europe are immigrants (or their descendants) who came when after WW2 a depleted workforce couldn't keep up with the rapidly growing economy. Cheap workforce for the industry was needed and in Turkey they came mostly from poorer rural regions. They were and still are much more traditional and religious and things like that stick "in exile". The rural regions is where Erdogan is strong. In Turkey itself this is balanced by more progressive and better educated people in the larger cities who are much less fond of Erdogan.

Yup. One could wonder Eastern Turkey and sometimes see villages that were abandoned literally within night, with maybe 5 older people of 500 left- they make impression to be sure. Then they were recreated as settlements of gastarbeiters somewhere in Germany or Sweden in almost the same social shape. It is also interesting that countries where emigration was less herd behaviour, and more individual decisions have much better support for liberal Turkish candidates. UK and US serve examples.

 

Zelensky seem to announce offensive start soon...curiously, there were discussions lately among some guys from here who are in UA as volunteers that Russian strikes are not that ineffective unfortunately. Especially regarding ammo and oil supplies they may pospone offensive a little. Ukrainains reportedly also have (expected) growing problems with keeping so much different heavy stuff runing. Heterogenic logistical lines are much more prone to being  disrupted by missiles.

 

[cesmonkey]

Russia hits military base in Ukraine in new wave of strikes
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hits-military-facility-ukraine-new-wave-strikes-2023-05-29/

Quote

In a rare acknowledgement of damage to a military "target", Ukraine said that work was under way to restore a runway and that five aircraft were taken out of service in the western region of Khmelnitskiy, though it did not name the sites.

 

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, dan/california said:

The_Capt has been giving us bits of a staff college course to see if it is capable of improving even reprobates likes us. And we should be very grateful for that.

You are welcome.  And for those that want to really get into the deep end:

https://www.iwp.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/The-Strategy-of-Subversion-Manipulating-the-Politics-of-Other-Nations-by-Paul-W-Blackstock.pdf

Really is a lost art in the West, and one we will likely need to re-learn

[Harmon Rabb]

He did not say no.

[dan/california]

It seems to me this spot needs to get hit with absolutely everything the Ukrainians haven't specifically promised not to shoot across the Russian border.

Edited May 29, 2023 by dan/california

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

ho are in UA as volunteers that Russian strikes are not that ineffective unfortunately. Especially regarding ammo and oil supplies they may pospone offensive a little

This conflicts w my preconceived notions and wishful thinking.  Therefore it is clearly not true. 

 

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Ales Dvorak said:

Strange .... few pages back Steve just said Kosovo worked out pretty well .....

The context of what I said was that the NATO intervention stopped a genocide in progress pretty quickly and with relatively little effort on behalf of the NATO force.  So yeah, it worked out pretty well and is still working out pretty well.  Perfect?  Of course not. This is just one violent demonstration.  Most European nations see a couple of these every year, or more, and the US just had a pretty damned big one.  So I have no idea what your point is, but it doesn't seem to be very relevant or particularly useful.

Steve

[sburke]

22 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

This conflicts w my preconceived notions and wishful thinking.  Therefore it is clearly not true. 

considering the expenditure on attacking Kiev, not sure this is a great source.  Also unclear how they would even be able to assess this.

[Beleg85]

45 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

This conflicts w my preconceived notions and wishful thinking.  Therefore it is clearly not true. 

 

Both sides wakened up from winter sleep and fires increased. Russians also do not throw this mass of missiles/shells at blank targets- they clearly try to hit stores and maybe even troop concenctrations, within their capabilities. Complexity of strikes also seriously changed, at some sectors of front Orlans and similar reportedly fly like crazy.

[dan/california]

26 minutes ago, sburke said:

considering the expenditure on attacking Kiev, not sure this is a great source.  Also unclear how they would even be able to assess this.

I think they are trying to sand bag the Russians, but who knows. From Seattle, with Osint only sources?

Worth noting the Russians are not screaming about any glorious successes though, and they find it worthwhile to throw missiles at Kyiv, which implies either a lack of better targets, political interference, or the ever popular both.

 

Edited May 29, 2023 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

7 hours ago, billbindc said:

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.

We've had some great detailed discussions about this earlier in the war.  The simple answer as to why the Grey Zone stuff didn't work for Russia is twofold:

1. Putin tried to apply the same old Grey Zone strategy even though it wasn't realistic given Ukraine's true feelings towards Russia and the growing bond with the West (which you noted above)
2. Putin didn't have the patience to let it play or to develop something that had a hope of working

The second one is why we have a full fledged war, not the first one. 

Putin recognized that his Grey Zone strategy for Ukraine wasn't working (his tantrum about Minsk in the previous 2 years as Exhibit A), but he completely misread why and how little leverage he had within Ukraine.  The evidence of this is how much his battle plan relied upon "5th column" support for Russia's invasion that simply didn't exist.  He also misread how much the West had been strengthening its internal mechanisms to handle further Russian aggression.  The final element, Putin concluding time had run out, pushed the whole process.

It's akin to a mediocre baker who came up with a risen bread recipe that didn't have nearly enough water or yeast in it, put it in the oven at way too low a temperature, then pulled it out too soon expecting to see a fully risen loaf of bread.  Instead, when he flipped the pan over he got a runny mess of goo.  He was clearly surprised with the result, but anybody with a tiny bit of knowledge about how to make good bread certainly wasn't.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Honestly my guess, and I stress guess is that Grey Zone/Subversive warfare can have a counter-effect in the people space if done too fast or clumsily.  If people think they are being actively subverted or manipulated then it can essentially change the salinity of the water.  Suddenly everything that happens is attributed to the Russians.  They run out of manoeuvre room because they have already burned too much of the conative forest, too fast.

Absolutely.  This was something I (and lots of other people, of course) pointed out as early as 2014.  The response from the West, especially the eastern side of NATO, was swift and well crafted adjustment to long term planning.  One of the first overt things we saw NATO do was define the "Green Men" scenarios as being worthy of Articles 4 and 5, which effectively removed that as a viable Grey Zone strategy against NATO. 

Another example is Putin's previous use of "frozen conflicts" to preserve the ability to harm the targeted state.  This was already a burned out tool even before 2014 because NATO saw how it was used and firmly decided it would oppose Russia using it again (at least in Ukraine).  The evidence of this is Russia started to go down the scripted path towards injecting "peace keepers" into the Donbas and NATO made it clear that such an action would be viewed as a military invasion.  In other words, not a Grey Zone activity but an outright act of war.  Russia didn't want that and so it repainted the vehicles it was readying for the "peace keeping" mission and slipped them over the border for its proxies.

There's likely more examples of this, but I think this is sufficient to illustrate that Russia's use of Grey Zone strategies had significant limitations before US intel agencies caught wind of the invasion plans.  After that point the US, and then others, actively worked to confront Russia's traditional Grey Zone elements before they got much traction.  It really threw Putin off his game, though he apparently didn't grasp it at the time.

Steve

[dan/california]

19 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

It's akin to a mediocre baker who came up with a risen bread recipe that didn't have nearly enough water or yeast in it, put it in the oven at way too low a temperature, then pulled it out too soon expecting to see a fully risen loaf of bread.  Instead, when he flipped the pan over he got a runny mess of goo. 

This is the recipe for a brick, not goo, to get goo you use way to MUCH water and yeast. Yes I am competing for the Mr flaming picky award.

Edited May 29, 2023 by dan/california

[danfrodo]

56 minutes ago, sburke said:

considering the expenditure on attacking Kiev, not sure this is a great source.  Also unclear how they would even be able to assess this.

Yeah, I guess my main point still stands -- RU would be able to do a lot more damage to UKR if so much of their long range ordnance was not spent trying to simply terrorize & murder civilians.

[Battlefront.com]

9 minutes ago, dan/california said:

This is the recipe for a brick, not goo, to get goo you use way to MUCH water and yeast. Yes I am competing for the Mr flaming picky award.

Tell you what, Mr. Picky... follow Putin's recipe as I stated, put it in the oven at 150deg, then pull it out after 15 minutes and tell me what you get.  I'll wait for the results of your experiment

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

ISW's May 29th report says that Lukashenko is not in hospital as he was seen in public.  It could be he did in fact go to a hospital, but not for urgent care.  If he is being treated for something it is likely he'll need to go to a hospital periodically even if his condition is improving.

Here's another sign of how bad things are with Russia's ability to support the war effort:

Quote

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on May 29 to form a Presidium of the Collegium of the Military Industrial Commission, which will have the authority to make operational decisions aimed at ensuring the completion of military-industrial tasks.[60] The decree states that the authorized representatives in federal districts are required to ensure activities of different state officials to solve issues relating to the implementation of investment projects necessary for the production of military supplies. The decree also orders federal representatives to solve issues pertaining to labor shortages and to incentivize employees with social guarantees.

What this says to me is that the information but key problems with Russia's war economy are real and that the Kremlin doesn't have any bright ideas on how to fix them.  Instead, he made a decree that basically amounts to "I don't care how you fix it, just fix it or else I'll fix you!".  Very soon there should be evidence of some pretty bad missteps being documented by various Tweeter feeds!  The problems Putin wants fixed are complex and not even remotely easy to solve.  Especially if trying to do it on the cheap.

Sew

[FancyCat]

So just to input some both sidesness, lets assume UKR crackdown on posting of ISR is working, and therefore we arent getting lots of info about Russian hits on UKR military/infrastructure targets in Kiev, what factors make Kiev a important logistical target? Isn't it like a main route to send stuff East? Now, I know the focus is on Kiev, being the capital and all, but what the rest of Ukraine, do we have data on where missiles and drones are being sent into Ukraine? I know there was a missile attack on Dnipro, so their missiles are hitting other places than Kiev, including Kherson. 

[Battlefront.com]

Another claim by RDK that they have crossed the border to cause problems within Russia:

Steve

[Seedorf81]

According to advisor of Mariupol mayor on Telegram:

"100 Russian soldiers killed, and about 400 wounded at ukranian strike on former medical center at Mariupol where 4 busses full of soldiers just had arrived. Also Russian communication-center destroyed." 

No confirmation from other sources yet.

Edited May 30, 2023 by Seedorf81

[Offshoot]

5 hours ago, TheVulture said:

Explosions reported in Sevastopol, possible in the port area. https://t.me/chp_sevastopol/15854

(google translate is pretty incoherent on this one, so if anyone can do a better job....)

Maybe it's like a horror movie, and one of those unmanned explosive boats has caught up with the Ivan Khurs again just when it thought it was safe

It essentially says that they don't know the cause of the "explosion" sounds, whether it is air defense or something else.

[Vet 0369]

And on this note, an extraordinarily important event is about to take place in Boston! Game seven of the Basketball playoffs between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics! The Celtics lost the first game on their own home court, lost the next two to the heat on the Heat’s home court, but took the next three games with one in Boston and two in Miami. No team has ever come back after a 0-3 deficit to win the series. The other three teams that came back from a 0-3 deficit, lost game seven on the road.

[sburke]

24 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:

And on this note, an extraordinarily important event is about to take place in Boston! Game seven of the Basketball playoffs between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics! The Celtics lost the first game on their own home court, lost the next two to the heat on the Heat’s home court, but took the next three games with one in Boston and two in Miami. No team has ever come back after a 0-3 deficit to win the series. The other three teams that came back from a 0-3 deficit, lost game seven on the road.

good luck!  Both our teams (sixers and warriors) got dumped early.

[NamEndedAllen]

47 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:

No team has ever come back after a 0-3 deficit to win the series

Not looking real good as the second quarter winds down. The truism of “Live by the 3, Die by the 3” being emphatically demonstrated. So far.

[sburke]

bummer sory @Vet 0369

[dan/california]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/29/world/europe/ukraine-kherson-torture-detention-centers.html

However bad you think the Russians are, they're worse than that.

[Battlefront.com]

Reports of some explosions near Moscow about an hour ago:

https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1663392862308913152

Looks like Syrian rebels killed a Russian GRU Colonel.  A reminder that Russia is still fighting in Syria:

Steve