How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[sburke]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

some good bits here today.  RU city steam system pipe breaks, flooding streams w scalding water.  Never seen that before.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/16/2217611/-More-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-burning-and-freezing?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

So we see all these RU cities w infrastructure breakdowns -- is this just due to the heavy cold snap hitting RU along w bad infrastructure?  Or is there sabotage going on also?  Anyone have any info on this?  Is it just that this cold snap so bad that it brought to the surface failures waiting to happen?  

Meanwhile, RU taking very heavy losses, day after day after day.  Putin must be feeling very confident to do this.  It may be really stupid, I don't know, but it does show a lot of confidence.

some of it is the cold, but Russia has also been cutting spend on infrastructure.

Massive Utility Breakdowns Across Russia Leave Thousands in the Grip of Winter (msn.com)

Quote

 

Alarmingly, this comes at a time when the Russian government plans sweeping reductions in funding allocated to housing and utility infrastructure. The federal budget for 2024-2026 indicates that this sector’s funding will be halved, with cuts set to reach 43% to 506 billion rubles in 2025 and a further 25% to 381 billion rubles in 2026. This would represent a 2.3-fold decrease over three years, to a six-year nadir.

Despite the dire circumstances facing the Russian public, data from the Russian government itself showed that wear and tear of communal infrastructure had exceeded 70% by mid-2022. With such a backdrop of dilapidation and fiscal austerity, residents’ frustrations have boiled over. In Podolsk, the rupture of a heating main at a private ammunition plant has led to protests and desperate appeals to President Vladimir Putin, as reported by the local press.

 

 

[Offshoot]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

So we see all these RU cities w infrastructure breakdowns -- is this just due to the heavy cold snap hitting RU along w bad infrastructure?  Or is there sabotage going on also?  Anyone have any info on this?  Is it just that this cold snap so bad that it brought to the surface failures waiting to happen? 

I just watched this video today on the infrastructure situation in Russia. The first half is mostly videos of incidents and discussion of the causes starts at the 14:00 mark. The presenter used to work as an executive for a Russian company that designed and built power stations, so he speaks from some experience.

He doesn't mention sabotage but perhaps obviously puts it down to money (less funding available), people (state enterprises most hit by recruitment for the war) and hardware (sanctions make important parts unavailable). Most surprising fact to me: the Russian government obliged different regions/cities to pay for rebuilding infrastructure in occupied Ukrainian cities, for example, St Petersburg has to pay for Mariupol from it's own budget, leaving less to maintain their own infrastructure.

 

Edited January 17 by Offshoot

[Seedorf81]

5 hours ago, danfrodo said:

some good bits here today.  RU city steam system pipe breaks, flooding streams w scalding water.  Never seen that before.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/16/2217611/-More-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-burning-and-freezing?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

So we see all these RU cities w infrastructure breakdowns -- is this just due to the heavy cold snap hitting RU along w bad infrastructure?  Or is there sabotage going on also?  Anyone have any info on this?  Is it just that this cold snap so bad that it brought to the surface failures waiting to happen?  

Meanwhile, RU taking very heavy losses, day after day after day.  Putin must be feeling very confident to do this.  It may be really stupid, I don't know, but it does show a lot of confidence.

Well, his great example is some dude called Josef Stalin and that guy set the bar for what you can do to ordinary Russians pretty high.

During the first, most deadly, winter of the Leningrad siege (end 1941- begin 1944) there was no infrastructure, no heating, no running water, and worst of all NO FOOD. In the worst period workers got 250 grams of bread PER DAY, but people without jobs got 150 grams. And the Germans bombed and shelled the city mercilessly.

So how did the leader of the Russian people react? (Again, Stalin's behaviour is greatly admired by Putin.)

He made the starving people of Leningrad "voluntarily" and publicly ask for LESSENING OF THEIR DAILY RATIONS!

So if anyone thinks that a horrible winter with infrastructural breakdown will soften Putin's "confidence", I wouldn't get my hopes up.

 

(One average loaf of bread is about 800 grams,btw.)

Edited January 17 by Seedorf81

[Holien]

1 hour ago, Seedorf81 said:

if anyone thinks that a horrible winter with infrastructural breakdown will soften Putin's "confidence", I wouldn't get my hopes up.

While I get your sentiment, it does puzzle me why Putler cares about election results and hasn't done a mass mobilisation.

So I think he does fear the public sentiment and the lack of Eggs and being cold don't make for happiness in Russia.

So maybe the continued internal cracks will eventually change his confidence....

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Seedorf81 said:

So if anyone thinks that a horrible winter with infrastructural breakdown will soften Putin's "confidence", I wouldn't get my hopes up.

I don’t think the risk is with Putin.  It is the Russian people.  Despite our tendency to dehumanize them and plaster all sorts of broad brush assumptions, they are in the end people.  As these stressors stack up over time eventually something is going to break.

[Offshoot]

Another little crack. I don't recall a protest of such scale (though still regional and not so big) in Russia since the start of the war. The cause is I assume directly related to the war and the crowd is waving and wearing Bashkortostan Republic flags. According to Wiki "On 3 August 1994, a Compact "On separation of authorities and mutual delegating of powers among the organs of power of the Russian Federation and the organs of power of the Republic of Bashkortostan" was signed, granting the republic autonomy. This agreement was abolished on 7 July 2005." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashkortostan )

 

[Carolus]

I doubt that the infrastructure failures we see in houses have something to do with the war (not the fires we see in warehouses and power equipment - those are surely happening with a little help).

Pipe leaks and boiler failures are things that happen after many years due to bad installation or manufacturing practices. What we see are the consequences of the economic downfall of Russia in the 90s and the corruption that began to take hold after that. 

No saboteur goes around digging up warm-water pipes to drill holes in them. And no pipe fails from one year to the next because the maintenance worker for the boilers was drafted.

This is the result of shoddy construction from the time the pipe was laid five or ten years ago - choice of material, rushed installation etc.

Edited January 17 by Carolus

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Carolus said:

I doubt that the infrastructure failures we see in houses have something to do with the war (not the fires we see in warehouses and power equipment - those are surely happening with a little help).

Pipe leaks and boiler failures are things that happen after many years due to bad installation or manufacturing practices. What we see are the consequences of the economic downfall of Russia in the 90s and the corruption that began to take hold after that. 

No saboteur goes around digging up warm-water pipes to drill holes in them. And no pipe fails from one year to the next because the maintenance worker for the boilers was drafted.

This is the result of shoddy construction from the time the pipe was laid five or ten years ago - choice of material, rushed installation etc.

It is not likely sabotage.  It is likely funding.  As per @sburke's post, Russia is pouring money into this war.  It may mean they are having to pull funding from already brittle infrastructure programming.  We were not likely to see it in the first winter, but in the second the strain might be starting to show.  We will have to see but my overall point is that Russia in not some inhuman monolith/borg that had unlimited endurance and resilience.  We all watched the same WW2 docs on how the Russian endured and overcame enormous odds.  But we parked our biases there...and not 1917 (and the decades of social resistance that led up to that). 

Russia has had two major political revolutions and one civil war in the last 100 years - why some believe that they are superhuman in social endurance is beyond me.  Any other nation with the same history we would call fragile.  Hell even China has only had one revolution and civil war, but they are fragile as all get out according to some scholars.

Edited January 17 by The_Capt

[cesmonkey]

 

[Beleg85]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I don’t think the risk is with Putin.  It is the Russian people.  Despite our tendency to dehumanize them and plaster all sorts of broad brush assumptions, they are in the end people.  As these stressors stack up over time eventually something is going to break.

This is not about dehumanziation, but cultural (+physical) environment and nature of muscovite polity. Problem is there are no symptoms of it being even near the entry point for breaking due to sanctions in short term. Russia as a whole is not flourishing (some circles visibly do, however -like busnessmen engaging in Belarus and Kazakhstan), but it never did in last decades anyway. Overall, for average subject citizen, it is not great, not terrible at the moment. Sure there are some quarters in towns that are literally freezing- but hey, it's Russia, right? It was like that 5 years ago, 10 and 20. "People in a city 50 km from me are freezing and neighbou's son got blown up in a war? Well, it's good i'ts not me; probably they deserve it anyway, blyat. Should be smarter and have more connections."

Naturally, Putin is not Stalin and Russia is only half-fascist right now- and in spheres where it is getting fully authoritarian, it is pushed rather reluctantly from Kremlin. After all, mafia-state is way easier to manage under normal circumstances than dictatorship or totalitarianism. It disperses responsibility for bad governing more evenly.

[Battlefront.com]

This is the sort of thing I've been harping on since the start of this war.  Russia was already a creaking mass of crumbling infrastructure and institutions before this war started.  The war was, as I keep saying, in part to distract people from how bad things are for the average Russian.  A quick war with big gains would have distracted people from this for a little while, not addressed it.  In Putin's mind this is good enough.  He and his power cabal get to stay in power with all the luxury that comes with it.  The problems his regime isn't addressing will be left for some other Tzar to clean up.  The war going poorly means all of these problems will get worse and more quickly too.

The economic article I linked to above explicitly stated that Russian Federal budgets aren't a good indicator of the health of the nation.  The primary reason is that the Federal government has reduced revenue sharing with its regional governments.  It's pretty easy to make your accounting look great if you expect someone else to pay for what you used to pay for!

Russia's already poor quality infrastructure is on the brink of collapse on a large scale.  The only thing that will fix this is effective use of large financial investments into infrastructure.  And yet, Russia is radically reducing those investments at the same time that costs are far higher than they were.  This means less Rubles and less done for each Ruble spent.

This is not sustainable.  Something will have to give.  Either Putin will have to abandon the war in favor of addressing critical infrastructure needs or things will break down so badly that either people will revolt or the economy will collapse.  Or both.

Russia is not a magical exception to the rules of modern economies.  The only question is how long will this final phase of Russia's long and stead collapse take to play out?  Soon is the answer we want, but I have no idea if that will be the case.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

This is not about dehumanziation, but cultural (+physical) environment and nature of muscovite polity. Problem is there are no symptoms of it being even near the entry point for breaking due to sanctions in short term. Russia as a whole is not flourishing (some circles visibly do, however -like busnessmen engaging in Belarus and Kazakhstan), but it never did in last decades anyway. Overall, for average subject citizen, it is not great, not terrible at the moment. Sure there are some quarters in towns that are literally freezing- but hey, it's Russia, right? It was like that 5 years ago, 10 and 20. "People in a city 50 km from me are freezing and neighbou's son got blown up in a war? Well, it's good i'ts not me; probably they deserve it anyway, blyat. Should be smarter and have more connections."

Naturally, Putin is not Stalin and Russia is only half-fascist right now- and in spheres where it is getting fully authoritarian, it is pushed rather reluctantly from Kremlin. After all, mafia-state is way easier to manage under normal circumstances than dictatorship or totalitarianism. It disperses responsibility for bad governing more evenly.

This is all true, however we have seen even within Russia's recent history (2011) that large scale domestic protest can come out of seemingly nowhere.  We saw this in 1990 as well.  Everything seemed calm, then BOOM... it wasn't.

The key to this is how much discontent is there that we aren't seeing signs of.  We know there's a lot of grumbling, but how deep does it go?  We don't know, but Putin's actions are making it more likely that there will be a mass revolt rather than less likely.

As I just posted, Russia is an organized industrial state.  It may not behave the same as other states, but there are fundamental principles which are.

We might not know where Russia is on the path towards collapse, but for sure it is headed in that direction.  Faster now because of the war and even faster because of Putin's choices on how to manage it.

Steve

[LongLeftFlank]

Note, these are AI-art. This is the guy who wound up the Twitter-arts world with hilariously banal AI reinterpretations of Hopper's 'Nighthawks', inspiring many other trolls....

 

[The_Capt]

13 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

This is not about dehumanziation, but cultural (+physical) environment and nature of muscovite polity. Problem is there are no symptoms of it being even near the entry point for breaking due to sanctions in short term. Russia as a whole is not flourishing (some circles visibly do, however -like busnessmen engaging in Belarus and Kazakhstan), but it never did in last decades anyway. Overall, for average subject citizen, it is not great, not terrible at the moment. Sure there are some quarters in towns that are literally freezing- but hey, it's Russia, right? It was like that 5 years ago, 10 and 20. "People in a city 50 km from me are freezing and neighbou's son got blown up in a war? Well, it's good i'ts not me; probably they deserve it anyway, blyat. Should be smarter and have more connections."

Every society is about "too bad for them, so long as I am fine" to a greater or lesser extent...right up to the point they are not. Every society can put up with only so much stress and then stuff starts to break.  Russia already saw hundreds of thousands of educated talent bolt in the first year of this war, so we know that "moscovite policy" is definitely not working for some.

War can unite - as we see in Ukraine.  Or they can break due to overwhelming stress.  The signs of creaking are pretty obvious in Russian society right now, but what we have not seen is that turn into something that metastasizes....yet. But for some reason we cut Russia nearly unlimited slack in this regard, while at the same time any mis-steps on the part of Ukraine are the end of days.

FFS, Priggy came damn near to invading Moscow last summer but somehow "Russia is never going to break under pressure because - (apathy), (polity), (culture), (history) insert narrative of ones choice...?  Russia is not NK, not even close - now there is nation with a different cultural calculus.  

I see people box themselves into "all is lost" down this line of thought:

Russia can never break under sanctions or external pressure.

The only way to defeat Russia is on the battlefield and that defeat cannot be partial, it must be complete.

Looks like we may be unable to achieve complete defeat....therefore...Russia will never be beaten.

I refute all three as built on weak assumptions and faulty premises.  

[kimbosbread]

3 hours ago, Carolus said:

No saboteur goes around digging up warm-water pipes to drill holes in them.

A good saboteur might. But I’m the kind of person that gives money to the worst street musician on the block, or the most annoying pan handler in a tourist area.

56 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Every society is about "too bad for them, so long as I am fine" to a greater or lesser extent...right up to the point they are not.

Otherwise known as “Somebody else’s problem”. Which is great, until you notice a new moon overhead that wasn’t previously there!

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Every society is about "too bad for them, so long as I am fine" to a greater or lesser extent...right up to the point they are not. Every society can put up with only so much stress and then stuff starts to break.  Russia already saw hundreds of thousands of educated talent bolt in the first year of this war, so we know that "moscovite policy" is definitely not working for some.

War can unite - as we see in Ukraine.  Or they can break due to overwhelming stress.  The signs of creaking are pretty obvious in Russian society right now, but what we have not seen is that turn into something that metastasizes....yet. But for some reason we cut Russia nearly unlimited slack in this regard, while at the same time any mis-steps on the part of Ukraine are the end of days.

I don't see any serious signs of societal crack as yet. And partly our differences in perception is cultural thing- for example, from my observation Westerners tend to take Russians openly grudging, cursing and complains as signs of them breaking just in a moment...while this is normal and not even particulary alarming state of things there. Even in military.

Now about Prig...yes and no. Prigozhin "coup" was treated by larger part of population as "war at the top"- struggle between and within Kremlin elites. It was dent in their system of power and authority to be sure, but not societal crack we are talking about here- that means, it was not manifestiation of aversion to this dumb war. Opposite, actually; it is clear that A.D. 2024 many segments of society a posteriori read it as warning of what will happen if MoD will not wage this war effectivelly enough. Plus it was self- made by Putin himself, giving way too much space to Wagner. Note also how much more effective Russian military appear to be when tsar finally, after one bloody year, decided to silence Girkinoids and similar guys. It was also Putin's personal mistake.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Russia is not NK, not even close - now there is nation with a different cultural calculus.  

Yup, these are even different civilizations, with very different views on individual, collective, hierarchy etc. ...and yet, here we are: they probbaly tanked 350 k casualties, excluding wounded....and they still recruit actual volunteers and support for war, both official and unoficial, seems to be high or at least stable.

In my personal opinion such dynamic of slaughter in unnecessary, conventional war would likely cause serious political troubles even in modern China with its 1400 mlns of atomized consuments and likely break North Korea (totalitarian regimes tend to be more stiff in this regard)... but this is subjective theory.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Russia can never break under sanctions or external pressure.

It probably can. But not under these sanctions. At least - not in timespan that would be acceptable for Ukraine. And that is putting aside big question of what "breaking" actually means, because it is understood very differently, depending where somebody stands.

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

The key to this is how much discontent is there that we aren't seeing signs of.  We know there's a lot of grumbling, but how deep does it go?  We don't know, but Putin's actions are making it more likely that there will be a mass revolt rather than less likely.

Like above- people in muscovia grudge constantly; it is character, way of communication and even way of orienting social hierarchy. I would be very surprised if we see any real discontent in the form of true social pressure on Putin to end this war. And even then there are ways of dealing with it by Kremlin. Given ubiqiuty of state controlling and even shaping formal organziations (by traditional ways...spies), only true form of discontent could be spontaneus combustion of emotions in one place - that means, traditional, unpolitical riots. These are usually very local and can be redirected toward scapegoats very easily...like nationalists complains were directed at Gerasimov.

Edited January 17 by Beleg85

[Battlefront.com]

15 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Like above- people in muscovia grudge constantly; it is character, way of communication and even way of orienting social hierarchy. I would be very surprised if we see any real discontent in the form of true social pressure on Putin to end this war. And even then there are ways of dealing with it by Kremlin. Given ubiqiuty of state controlling and even shaping formal organziations (by traditional ways...spies), only true form of discontent could be spontaneus combustion of emotions in one place - that means, traditional, unpolitical riots. These are usually very local and can be redirected toward scapegoats very easily...like nationalists complains were directed at Gerasimov.

We are saying the same thing, I'm just skipping the details

Objectively Russia's quality of life is declining.  Infrastructure, healthcare, individual spending power, ability to travel even within the country, etc.  Russians are noticing this and they are grumbling about it.  This has caused Putin to gradually reduce freedoms and increase paranoia within the population.  This process has been ongoing since 2011 and has accelerated in the last couple of years.  It puts further stress on society, but it also keeps them in line short term.

Importantly, there are no signs that Putin's regime is doing anything constructive to counter these stressors.  Logically, this means everything that is bad now will get worse.  Illogically, Russian's tolerance for this is higher than in other industrialized nations.  By a wide margin.  Therefore, Russia is not as near to collapse as Westerners think based on what their own breaking point is.

However, objectively all of the problems within Russia are being made worse by the choices of Putin's regime.  This is in large part due to Russia's inability to take care of its own people and continue the war in Ukraine at the same time.  In fact, it is pretty clear the regime was unable to take care of its own people BEFORE the war and that the war, to some extent, was intended to distract people from that fact.

So, I will say again.  The Russian regime under Putin is driving the nation towards the edge of a cliff.  This is objectively true and no amount of Russian culture changes this.  What we don't know is where the edge of the cliff is or how fast Russia is headed towards it.  What we DO know is that revolutions, even Russian ones, have happened the day after experts have said there is no sign of revolution.

There is reason to hope for another Russian revolution sometime soon, but it would be wrong to expect it.

Steve

[kimbosbread]

19 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Note also how much more effective Russian military appear to be when tsar finally, after one bloody year, decided to silence Girkinoids and similar guys.

Is the military actually more effective (despite losing element of surprise, territory, best soldiers, formations and equipment), or is this merely a manifestation of Surovkin understanding primacy of denial, and consequently mass not working?

[danfrodo]

Thanks all for your insightful posts on the infrastructure question I raised.  The question was expanded to the bigger picture by Steve et al, where the bigger question of "what does this mean" is addressed.  It does seem that a long hard winter with failing power & plumbing could push people into a "nothing to lose" kind of mindframe.  Like was mentioned above, folks are fine with the war & regime while they are not really affected by it.  But when they are freezing & have no running water and the regime has no answers....  well, that's a whole different kind of thing.  

Hopefully this will be a very long & hard winter with lots more infrastructure disasters in the big urban areas and folks will start to come out in the streets in droves.  Like was mentioned, everything can seem fine & then blow up.  A lot of folks will be angry that all the countries resources are tied up in a pointless war while their own quality of life is heading toward zero.  

As Steve said, a quick war with big wins is one thing.  But a looooong war with big losses is another.

[billbindc]

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

It would take an expert on Russian infrastructure to give us a sense of what this might mean.  However, it's pretty easy to sketch out the possibilities:

1.  Normal for Russia coming from the usual combo of corruption and neglect.  Nothing interesting to see here.

2.  Above and beyond normal Russian problems as a result of increased impact from corruption and/or neglect.  Less public spending means less opportunity for easy graft, which means those who make a living off of graft take proportionally more than they did before.  A $1m job from 3 years ago may have had $200k carved out as graft.  Now because there's fewer jobs to steal from that $1m job may have $300k carved out.  And with everything costing more that may effectively mean even less actual work/product done out of what remains after everybody takes their cut.

3.  Reduced public spending to maintain what already exists.  Aside from the possibility of increased graft, it is fact that the Russian government has been facing increasing demands for public spending while at the same time having less revenue coming in.  That has only gotten worse since the war started.

Here's a report published back in 2019 by an influential European think tank.  It provides a good overview of where the Russian economy was headed before this war and why I maintain part of the reason for attacking Ukraine was economic (even if it was to distract from it):

https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2019RP02/

Steve

Don't sleep on the labor shortage part of this. The kind of guy in Russian society who mucks out plumbing and fixes steam pipes can easily think he will make more money in the army or because he has no krisha, he gets mobilized anyway. And at best for him, the defense industry pays better and is growing. 

[dan/california]

21 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Don't sleep on the labor shortage part of this. The kind of guy in Russian society who mucks out plumbing and fixes steam pipes can easily think he will make more money in the army or because he has no krisha, he gets mobilized anyway. And at best for him, the defense industry pays better and is growing. 

And Russian workforce demographics were awful before Putin's three day SMO turned into an endless meat grinder. The only question about the war is what has done more damage? The actual casualties, or the mass flight of and entire generation of technically competent people who had the skills and resources to leave.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

It probably can. But not under these sanctions. At least - not in timespan that would be acceptable for Ukraine. And that is putting aside big question of what "breaking" actually means, because it is understood very differently, depending where somebody stands.

"Breaking" would be, in terms of this war, a condition whereby prosecution of the war is no longer possible.  A secondary meaning could be regime change.  The third possible definition is one we actually want to avoid which is the uncontrolled break up of the state of Russia.

I don't think people really understand the objectives nor the mechanism of sanctions.  To most it is simply "stop buying stuff and Putin go broke."   That is not really how large economies work.  They are more like weather or climate systems and sanctions are attempts at changing their overall energies over time.

So, as a min, I think the sanctions on Russia have three major strategic goals:

- Isolate Russia as much as possible through collective action and lateral pressures.

- Constrain Russia's ability to wage war.

- Put pressure on the regime and Russian people in order to induce change.

So before one can make a judgement on whether sanctions are working or not, one has to look at those three objectives and really measure progress - not simply "what we want".

Russia is more isolated now than it has been since the Cold War.  The trend appears to increasing as the US continues to exert its own power.  Is Russia completely isolate, no, not yet.  But one cannot say that is had been business as usual either.

Russia is definitely constrained in its ability to wage war.  We do not know the full effects of these sanctions on the economy but we do know that Russia is pulling from far afield to sustain itself.  I think there is an argument to be made on Putin wanting to avoid full mobilization because it may create a tipping point amongst the population - a restrained economy has to be part of that calculus.  Can Russia still fight?  Sure.  But can it field a modern competitive military right now...no freakin way.

Are the Russian people actually doing anything about all this?  Who knows.  There have been signs of strain and resistance.  I am sure we are helping that along in the back field.  But these things can take years to fully come to bear.  One could argue that the sanctions regime is as much about the next war with Russia as the current one.

So before anyone throws up their hands and goes "Sanctions are not working!!"  Really look at what they are doing.  And more importantly how much worse the situation would be if we had never undertaken them.  We won't know about Russia breaking until it does.

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

Now about Prig...yes and no. Prigozhin "coup" was treated by larger part of population as "war at the top"- struggle between and within Kremlin elites. It was dent in their system of power and authority to be sure, but not societal crack we are talking about here- that means, it was not manifestiation of aversion to this dumb war. Opposite, actually; it is clear that A.D. 2024 many segments of society a posteriori read it as warning of what will happen if MoD will not wage this war effectivelly enough. Plus it was self- made by Putin himself, giving way too much space to Wagner. Note also how much more effective Russian military appear to be when tsar finally, after one bloody year, decided to silence Girkinoids and similar guys. It was also Putin's personal mistake.

Ok, that is one way to look at it.  How about what we did not see?  Russian mothers were not standing arm in arm on the highways leading into Moscow to protect Putin either.  Apathy cuts both ways frankly.  Massive inaction, does not mean massive action in another direction.

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

my observation Westerners tend to take Russians openly grudging, cursing and complains as signs of them breaking just in a moment...while this is normal and not even particulary alarming state of things there. Even in military.

On this.  Did you ever consider that Europeans, particularly Eastern Europeans are too close to the problem?  Too much history, too much bias and just...too much?  I hear this "westerners just don't get it" a lot.  But maybe our perspective is a bit more unshadowed by Russia.  In the West we know all about "grudging, cursing and complaining", we have built entire industries around those concepts.  Our system looks entirely dysfunctional from the outside based on how much we disagree. 

But that vs armed troops off the freakin leash marching on the capital...is something else entirely.  Stuff exploding all over the place.  Rich people continually trying to fly out windows.  The amount of effort and expense Russia is spending on "internal security".  Evidence of extremely poor discipline and conditions within its military.  All this stuff starts to stack up well beyond "I want a better cellphone plan."

We project so much onto Russia - hope and fears.  When we should spend more time just watching the damn duck.  Is it walking and talking like a duck?  Is it making weird sounds that in any other nation we would see as signs of strain?  Russia is not in a good place.  There is no doubt of that. 

Finally, what does that mean to the war?  Well the big one is that Russia's ability to field a modern military able to conduct operational level offensive operations is in serious doubt.  They had the goods two years ago but that old lady filmed on that first week was right all along - The RA of 2021 is in Ukrainian fields pushing up sunflowers.  What is on the ground now is largely conscripts and essentially holding on while being wasted on small tactical suicide missions. We were all surprised that they could even hold the lines they have, but there you go.  War, or at least this war, has shifted towards defensive advantage, that much is pretty much settled.  That had nothing to do with Russian prowess or resources, and everything to do with shifts over the last 40 years. 

So here we are.  Watching and waiting to see what happens next.

[Seedorf81]

7 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I don’t think the risk is with Putin.  It is the Russian people.  Despite our tendency to dehumanize them and plaster all sorts of broad brush assumptions, they are in the end people.  As these stressors stack up over time eventually something is going to break.

As far as I know most revolutions and uprisings have one or more underground/resistance/rebel - groups that do have a decent "organisational structure" with active planning and communication. Sometimes they're small in size (Nazi-Germany), sometimes huge (Afghanistan).  Some are only strong in a country's rebellious area's (Yemen), while others can be found almost throughout the entire country. (Vietnam, Algeria 1950's).

Those organisations usually make plans for what to do, and how to act, when the opportunity for "the revolution" arises.

They're all a bit like embers in a dying fire. Waiting.. but as soon as a new piece of wood is thrown upon those embers the flames suddenly come back to life.

The Prigozhin-revolt was not one log into the fire, but an effin busload of logs! Even in Russia most people, and certainly any "revolutionaries" must have realized that something big was going on. I think the storming of the Bastille in France may have been less huge in every aspect (except for the final result, that is).

But I haven't heard of ANY streetfighting ANYWHERE in Russia, because revolutionary groups took their chance. Nowhere, as far as i know, were huge demonstrations reported. No attacks on governemental institutions, no riots, no protests, not even minor disturbances, no cheering crowds. Not the least bit of chaos! Such a huge country, but nowhere any noticable support for, what after a few hours was stunningly obvious for even the stupidest of onlookers, an uprising on the way without any opposition!

But nothing but silence..

And that for me indicates that we will not see a people's uprising in Russia. Maybe someone close to Putin succeeds in killing him, or maybe he falls terminally ill, but I cannot see a second "storming of the winterpalace".

Edited January 17 by Seedorf81
Grammar this time. And spelling, of course..

[Battlefront.com]

33 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So before anyone throws up their hands and goes "Sanctions are not working!!"  Really look at what they are doing.  And more importantly how much worse the situation would be if we had never undertaken them.  We won't know about Russia breaking until it does.

I keep hearing people (here, media, politicians, etc.) talk about sanctions not working.  They have been saying that since 2014/2015.  However every single economic study/report I've seen, produced by economists and business experts, constantly mention negative impacts of sanctions.  The report I just noted on the previous is a prime example of this.

So, which is it?  Sanctions don't work (popular opinion) or sanctions do work (economists)?  The answer depends on expectations.

While it is easy to point to Russian successes in doing things despite sanctions, it is impossible (or at least very difficult) to point to all the things Russia is failing to do because of sanctions.  The old "you can't prove a negative" problem.

To reframe this, it is like critics of masks and distancing policies during the early COVID days.  One side said "masks don't work because people are still dying" while the other side says "yes, but imagine how many more people would die if most people didn't wear masks?".  Both are correct in their own way, but the one that matters most is the one that's really impossible to quantify.  And that is what ISN'T happening.

Steve

[Haiduk]

UKR anti-drone weapon )

Cameraman jokes: "Hey, show his hood! A snake skin on a moment! My boots cost cheaper!"

 

Edited January 17 by Haiduk