How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[kevinkin]

11 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

In fact there is evidence that natural resources can even hold a non-democratic economy back, since they provide a means for an autocrat to fund their regime without having to actually develop their economy.

Never thought about it that way. Thanks for that. Still I would rather have natural resources. It makes everything else a bit easier. I guess it comes down to the people and their courage to govern themselves.  

[Seedorf81]

2 hours ago, kevinkin said:

So how would NATO win the war and stop the killing? The current approach might, but with a huge human cost. There are other ways to defeat Putin. Watching videos of soldiers being blown up is not productive. It does not advance the conversation. Very few people on planet Earth know a war of this scale is going on. We care. Too few don't. They are oblivious.

Underlining and Italic by me.

 

I have my doubts whether you "care" as much about the Sudanese war.

From last April at least 6 to 10 thousand killed, 3,8 million displaced, and another million fled abroad.

Not very small scale, I reckon.

 

 

[Teufel]

Zaporozhye direction

Ukrainian fighters are pushing hard, very hard, breaking through the first line of defense. The advance to the second dugouts along the first line in the direction of the village of Verbove was recorded. Reserves are constantly brought down by gifts, which our fighters destroy as much as possible.

In the area of the Robotyne-Novoprokopivka direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine occupied a large stronghold located at a height, this is a big job, big losses  There is a tactical movement in the direction of Vasylivka.

The Armed Forces advanced in the village of Kam'yanske in the south of N.P.

In Mariintsi, the promotion of gifts has been recorded. A few days ago, tanks worked on positions in the center of the city.

Bakhmut direction

Ukrainian fighters continue to clear the village of Klishchiivka. After capturing the center of the village, the Podars cling to whatever they can in the north so as not to lose important positions  In the Andriivka area, the 3rd OShBr continues its landing movement in the direction of the railway.

[kevinkin]

11 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

I have my doubts whether you "care" as much about the Sudanese war.

I do know. But that would a subject of different thread. I live an breath these issues. Once the Sudanese debacle intersects with the Ukraine debacle maybe we can all solve the problems together. And hold hands. 

[Centurian52]

On 9/4/2023 at 8:32 AM, Carolus said:

I think the perspective is really new for many of us (and people in general).

Most people here on the forum have read historical accounts or research about wars, and thus we enjoyed the hindsight perspective.

We read that X retreated from Y in the year so and so, but usually we don't know what that meant in detail from day to day or hour to hour for the involved units (unless someone really dug into the research).

Here we actually see hour to hour updates. It's a train wreck in slow motion. You can infer certain things, liek that it will never reach the station in time, buy who knows what it looks like when the dust settles.

Yup. Three or four months of operations doesn't really seem like all that much when you are reading about it after the fact. But it's very different when you have to watch the months slowly grind by in real time.

Though watching a war unfold in real time wasn't an entirely novel experience for me. The effect was recreated pretty well by the week by week video series that started cropping up over the last decade. Towards the beginning of the war I couldn't help thinking that the whole experience was a lot like waiting on the next episode of The Great War to drop on youtube. Considering how close the experience of watching those sorts of series is to the real thing (somehow I managed to be in suspense about how this or that operation would turn out, despite already knowing darn well how it would turn out), I think that format can be considered a complete success.

[Centurian52]

27 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Still I would rather have natural resources

For sure. It's best to have both resources and a functional economy. It just seems that a functional economy is a prerequisite to getting the most out of the resources. Without a functional economy the most you can do with an abundance of natural resources is extract and sell them to make lots of money (which is great for the dictator, but not helpful for their economy).

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

I greatly appreciate the response from a professional artillery officer. 

Now if we could only get @TheForwardObserver back online.. 

[Bulletpoint]

2 hours ago, kevinkin said:

I sure a house fly has some form of hope until they are squashed. 

At least it died with a gender neutral pronoun.

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

I hope you are right.

Someone else said they were winning the artillery war. If that's true, then they should be in Tokmak soon.

Yeah they definitely seem to have the upper hand with fires and Russian Air seems to be held back (although I wonder if that's what got the Challenger 2). 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

This comes across as defeatist. Maybe I misunderstand.

Defeatist is someone who doesn't believe anything can be done to win.  An optimist believes victory can come about through wishful thinking.  A realist believes in an outcome that is consistent with the facts.  I am a realist, not either a defeatist or an optimist.  I also believe in Ukrainian victory.  I have since before this war started and see nothing to dissuade me from that point of view.

This war is not a sprint, it is a marathon.  In long distance races the runners who have an early lead are not always the ones who finish first, or at all.  In fact, it is often the ones who seem to be trailing that come up and win in the end.  Trying to sprint or shortcut a path to victory is more likely to fail than letting the marathon play out according to its constraints.

The only strategy that seems viable in this war is to outlast the other guy.  Russia is trying to outlast Ukraine's will/ability to fight and the West's will/ability to support the, and both are trying to outlast Russia.  The only probable way the war can be shortened is if the West engages Russia militarily in an overwhelming way.  Note I said shortening the war, not winning the war.  Because there is a greater than 0% chance that if the West engages Russia in a conventional way that Russia will respond in a nuclear way.  And guess where they are most likely to land their nukes?  Ukraine. 

Do you think Ukrainian mothers are better off with the heartbreak and suffering of seeing their sons and daughters killed in a conventional war, or do you think they are better off dead and 10 generations of Ukrainians unable to live in the areas Russia decided to make uninhabitable?  I have my opinion on this, as I am sure Ukrainians do as well.  I think it is likely we are in agreement that there are worse things than this conventional war that Ukraine needs to be concerned about.

Steve

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

The West has a truly golden chance to do well while doing good. All of our major competitors/problems/enemies except Chine are pure gas station economies. Hydrocarbons ARE their economy, and among many other bad things funds the suppression of their own people. A real push, and Biden is trying, to combine mileage standards and electrification of transportation is the single best geopolitical move we have. Whatever reduction in Global warming that gets us is a pure bonus.

Yeah, I wish the US would push energy independence, nukes and solar as national security policy. We are so favored in natural resources and everything else that a state could want that it’s pure laziness and a lack of a good vision for the next American Century that is holding us back.

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

In fact there is evidence that natural resources can even hold a non-democratic economy back, since they provide a means for an autocrat to fund their regime without having to actually develop their economy.

“The Natural Resource Curse” is honestly kind of garbage. It’s entirely about rule of law. If you don’t have rule of law, and you have billions in oil, diamonds, gold etc kleptocrats and criminals will pillage it. There are lots of countries with plenty of natural resources that do great, and the common thread is rule of law.

[Haiduk]

Yesterday gains of UKR troops on Robotyne - Verbove line

According to Kostiantyn Mashovets, Russians concentrated at least two regiments of 76th air-assault division on right flank of UKR troops (Kopani - Robotyne) and forces of 7th air-assaulr division were redeployed to left flank to Novopokrovka - Verbove. By opinion of Mashovets, Russians decided to conduct classical operation - while huge host of motorized and rifle regiments, BARS battalions and recon units will break advance of UKR troops to south, air-assault units have to attack on flanks. Their minimum objectives can be to attract reserves to counter this attacks in order to exhaust advancing potential of UKR troops. Maximal objectives - to crush flanks of UKR troops and come to their rears in Novodanylivka and Mala Tokmachka.

So, today likely happened activation of Russian 76th air-assault division. Russian milbloggers vying with each other have been reporting how VDV with crushing strike has taken back Robotyne. Then they already told about "VDV gained foothold on several streets" and later "Rabotino still in grey zone", UKR artillery makes a trouble for us, UKR Bradleys drive like taxi in the village, we have a lack of firepower to hit the enemy"

UKR sources told nothing about Russian counter attack, but maybe this will be later. Something obviously took place.  

Edited September 5, 2023 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Myronivskyi settlement, Donetsk oblast (Svitlodarsk thermal palnt area). UKR HIMARSed Russian ammo dump

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

“The Natural Resource Curse” is honestly kind of garbage. It’s entirely about rule of law. If you don’t have rule of law, and you have billions in oil, diamonds, gold etc kleptocrats and criminals will pillage it. There are lots of countries with plenty of natural resources that do great, and the common thread is rule of law.

Chicken and egg scenario.  Countries with a strong rule of law BEFORE the discovery of large amounts of natural resources tend to have an easier time of maintaining rule of law AFTER.  Countries that discover the natural resources before rule of law takes hold are far less likely to establish it after.  The reason is that natural resources are easily exploited by a few people and those people then have the means to prevent the establishment of rule of law.

Further, countries teetering on having rule of law can easily lose it because of natural resources.  This is what oil/gas did to Russia.  Whatever chance 1991 Russia had of becoming a state responsible to its people disappeared with the high demand for its carbon fuel resources.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Yesterday gains of UKR troops on Robotyne - Verbove line

According to Kostiantyn Mashovets, Russians concentrated at least two regiments of 76th air-assault division on right flank of UKR troops (Kopani - Robotyne) and forces of 7th air-assaulr division were redeployed to left flank to Novopokrovka - Verbove. By opinion of Mashovets, Russians decided to conduct classical operation - while huge host of motorized and rifle regiments, BARS battalions and recon units will break advance of UKR troops to south, air-assault units have to attack on flanks. Their minimum objectives can be to attract reserves to counter this attacks in order to exhaust advancing potential of UKR troops. Maximal objectives - to crash flanks of UKR troops and come to their rears in Novodanylivka and Mala Tokmachka.

So, today likely happened activation of Russian 76th air-assault division. Russian milbloggers vying with each other have been reporting how VDV with crashing strike has taken back Robotyne. Then they already told about "VDV gained foothold on several streets" and later "Rabotino still in grey zone", UKR artillery makes a trouble for us, UKR Bradleys drive like taxi in the village, we have a lack of firepower to hit the enemy"

UKR sources told nothing about Russian counter attack, but maybe this will be later. Something obviously took place.  

This should be an interesting couple of days.  So far Russia has been absolutely unable to execute a quick and decisive attack without suffering horrendous losses in the process.  Given that Russia's forces are stretched thin, it seems unlikely these attacks will wind up doing much except exhausting their resources.

A few posts ago I reminded people that the reason Ukraine has forces in reserve is to that they can exploit a breakthrough.  Russia has no such reserves.  Even if it manages to crack some portion of the Ukrainian front somewhere in this area, it seems very doubtful that they will be able to withstand what comes next.  Ukraine certainly will continue to attack in this area and they have superiority of resources.

Although it is risking confirmation bias, I believe Russia using their "elite" units, scraped from the other fronts, to conduct such a relatively large scale counter attack reinforces my belief that they don't have much faith in their main defensive lines.

Steve

[danfrodo]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Chicken and egg scenario.  Countries with a strong rule of law BEFORE the discovery of large amounts of natural resources tend to have an easier time of maintaining rule of law AFTER.  Countries that discover the natural resources before rule of law takes hold are far less likely to establish it after.  The reason is that natural resources are easily exploited by a few people and those people then have the means to prevent the establishment of rule of law.

Further, countries teetering on having rule of law can easily lose it because of natural resources.  This is what oil/gas did to Russia.  Whatever chance 1991 Russia had of becoming a state responsible to its people disappeared with the high demand for its carbon fuel resources.

Steve

Norway is a fossil fuel state where the wealth is distributed.  Russia is a fossil fuel state where the wealth is not.  Hence, backing up the point made by Steve et al above

[Centurian52]

On 9/2/2023 at 1:39 PM, Eddy said:

Challenger is rifled so perhaps that gives it better accuracy. Also uses DU rather than tungsten.  

I just wanted to take a moment to back up to the Challenger 2 discussion from Saturday, since there were a couple points I wanted to make.

The rifled gun does not make it more accurate. Modern tank rounds are fin stabilized, so they don't need to be spin stabilized. In fact, for wonky physics reasons that I don't fully understand, spinning apparently has a destabilizing effect on long rod projectiles (well, some spin still helps to stabilize it, but more than a tiny amount of spin will start destabilizing it again), which is why APFDSD rounds fired from rifled guns are actually designed to counteract the spinning. So the Challenger 2 isn't more accurate than any other modern western tank (in fact I believe it's actually less accurate than other western MBTs, though with a modern digital fire control system it's still pin-point accurate by Cold War standards). But it's easy enough to believe that it's more accurate than the T-64BVs, T-72Ms, and T-80BVs that most Ukrainian tankers would have had experience with before it arrived. The rifling also reduces the performance of kinetic energy rounds in penetrating armor relative to a smoothbore gun of the same size, though the Challenger 2 can still probably punch hard enough to deal with most Russian tanks easily enough.

The real advantage of the rifled gun is that it makes it possible to fire HESH effectively. Which is why it's puzzling that the Ukrainians apparently aren't receiving HESH ammunition. A Challenger 2 without HESH seems to be missing the point. Retaining a rifled gun into the modern day was a serious design compromise that the British army made specifically because they believed HESH was worth it. HESH (while not effective against modern MBTs) is a fantastic anti-personnel, anti-bunker, and anti-light vehicle round.

[Eddy]

21 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

The Natural Resource Curse” is honestly kind of garbage. It’s entirely about rule of law.

Don't want to derail the thread but not always apparently => Dutch disease - Wikipedia

[Eddy]

16 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

I just wanted to take a moment to back up to the Challenger 2 discussion from Saturday, since there were a couple points I wanted to make.

I could hide behind that I used the words 'perhaps' but in all honesty I did not know any of that, so thanks for replying. Explains one of the reasons why Chally 3 will be smooth bore I suppose

Edited September 5, 2023 by Eddy

[Centurian52]

20 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

“The Natural Resource Curse” is honestly kind of garbage. It’s entirely about rule of law. If you don’t have rule of law, and you have billions in oil, diamonds, gold etc kleptocrats and criminals will pillage it. There are lots of countries with plenty of natural resources that do great, and the common thread is rule of law.

The Natural Resource Curse does not state that all countries with an abundance of natural resources are doomed to destitution. Having lots of natural resources can be very beneficial. But, it helps if you are democracy. And, particularly if you're not a democracy, it helps if the resources are only discovered after you have already built a thriving economy.

Finally, the curse is probabilistic in nature. There is no rule stating that a non-democratic country which discovers large resource deposits can't build a thriving economy. It's just less likely to build a thriving economy.

[Haiduk]

Yesterday evening UKR missiles hit large ammo dump near Vesele village, 30 km NW from Melitopol. Locals from Melitopol wrote more than three hours huge detonations were heard

Other strike reportedly was near Osypenko village in 15 km north from Berdiansk. As locals told Russian training range and deployment of troops could be hit.

 

[Haiduk]

UKR troops today activated on own left flank of V.Novosilka direction and attacked  on line Novodonetske -  Novomajorske - Shevchenko.

According to Khodakovskiy and "Batatlion Viostok" TG UKR artilelry shelling throughout several days has weaken minefields, so UKR armor quickly and almost without losses delivered infantry, which disembarked and could burst to trenches under cover of armor, shooting out trenches with point blanc shot. Then UKR armor withdrew to avoid artilelry strike. Allegedly after fierce fight UKR troops pushed back Russians/DNR forces (Khodakovskiy didn't say where). He claims UKR lost about four tanks disabled (there was a video with two disabled UKR tanks) and about of platoon of personnel, so UKR were forced to threw in the battle new 38th marines brigade from reserve %)

Close to the evening Russian TG wrote there is a battle ongoing for Zavitne Bazhannia village.

Just for illustration - situation in this sector on 30th of Aug

 

Edited September 5, 2023 by Haiduk

[danfrodo]

1 minute ago, Haiduk said:

UKR troops today activated on own left flank of V.Novosilka direction and attacked  on line Novodonetske -  Novomajorske - Shevchenko.

According to Khodakovskiy and "Batatlion Viostok" TG UKR artilelry shelling throughout several days has weaken minefields, so UKR armor quickly and almost without losses delivered infantry, which disembarked and could burst to trenches under cover of armor, shooting out trenches with point blanc shot. Then UKR armor withdrew to avoid artilelry strike. Allegedly after fierce fight UKR troops pushed back Russians/DNR forces (Khodakovskiy didn't say where). He claims UKR lost about four tanks disabled and about of platoon of personnel, so UKR were forced to threw in the battle new 38th marines brigade from reserve %)

Close to the evening Russian TG wrote there is a battle ongoing for Zavitne Bazhannia village.

Just for illustration - situation in this sector on 30th of Aug

 

This is what I've been hoping: that UKR has enough resources to threaten toward Vasylivka and down from 'the Novos' while keeping the heavy assaults around Robotyne.  If it's true that RU is short on reserves and supplies (from ammo dumps destruction) then hopefully one of these sectors blows open and causes a cascading crisis along this front.

[kimbosbread]

30 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Chicken and egg scenario.  Countries with a strong rule of law BEFORE the discovery of large amounts of natural resources tend to have an easier time of maintaining rule of law AFTER.  Countries that discover the natural resources before rule of law takes hold are far less likely to establish it after.  The reason is that natural resources are easily exploited by a few people and those people then have the means to prevent the establishment of rule of law.

Sure, there is a destabilizing effect of having lots of money all of the sudden- “people who aren’t familiar with managing money win the lottery and blow it” effect- and that can corrupt governments, especially the mafia-style-state where it’s all about extracting wealth. It doesn’t juyst apply to natural resources but also agriculture (green gold ie avocados) or industry.

Ukraine has fewer natural resources compared to Russia, but still has plenty, and has lots of industries where money could be vampired out by kleptocrats- and in fact was. However, despite this Ukraine has a had a series of governments that progressively pulled themselves out of Russia’s clutches despite all the obstacles and conflict that has entailed.

I vaguely recall there are a number of good counterexamples that one throws at resource curse advocates; I’ll try to find my books on the subject.

30 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Further, countries teetering on having rule of law can easily lose it because of natural resources.  This is what oil/gas did to Russia.  Whatever chance 1991 Russia had of becoming a state responsible to its people disappeared with the high demand for its carbon fuel resources.

Oil/gas being the thumb on the scale that tipped Russia into a mafia state? It’s plasuible, but I don’t buy it, but if you have a source for this I’d love to read it because it never come up as an example when I was studying natural resource economics in college in the early 2000s.

I don’t buy it because Russia was already a decaying mafia state, where anything that was nailed down would be stolen, by anybody with the opportunity (see the 90s, for everything). Their culture was absolutely not conducive to transitioning into a western democracy. Plus everybody who valued hard work and wanted democracy left as fast as they could once the curtain fell.

 

[Haiduk]

Russian Volunteer Corps issued a video of their raid to Bryansk oblast, which was two days ago. Russian TG claimed during the clash one Russian border guard was killed, several were wounded

Intensive shooting, RVC uses NLAW