How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[kraze]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Exactly.  What I think our Ukrainian friends are pointing out is that Putin genuinely has a large base of support that approve of him being President.  That is absolutely the case, therefore if there had been an election and he didn't kill off his opposition he might still have been elected President.

However, to say this was an election is absolutely wrong on every single factual basis imaginable.  As has already been stated, this was a predetermined propaganda exercise.  The appearance of it being an election are deliberate, just as plastic fruit in a bowel is designed to look like real fruit.

Steve

It was a propaganda exercise only to show the world how fanatically russians really support him and the war. Like "look at how many really are supporting me and what we are doing in Ukraine, how can you even doubt my might, I have a hundred million of ein volk behind me".

As for opposition - I'd rarther call it 'competition'. Even Navalny was an avid supporter of war (or, rather, wars), he just thought he should've been the one leading it. It's literally the same opposition of Khruschev to Stalin or Brezhnev to Khruschev.

They all wanted to threaten you with nukes and occupy Europe. They just disagreed on the actual implementation. So it really doesn't matter who is currently in the opposition, they all share the same idea - unless someone starts wanting the throne - then they start falling down from the sky or out of windows until one remains and he gets to be a Tzar.

Edited March 19 by kraze

[Carolus]

23 minutes ago, Holien said:

It could be the smartest use of drones by Ukraine so far and perhaps have the biggest payback. (And Ukraine is already at genius level for use with the ships sunk...)

Fingers Crossed...

And maybe Ukraine will also eventually adjust their targeting to the most expensive and useful parts of the Russian energy and railway grid - unless the Western powers really wagged their fingers and declared that as forbidden.

[Holien]

 

Ok as we are talking about Elections PR Stunts this popped up and worth a read...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/05/putins-human-rights-council-accidentally-posts-real-crimean-election-results-only-15-voted-for-annexation/amp/

The article is from May 2014. I know I know going back a bit but when did the war start...

So for those thinking there was mass support for the annexation the actual figures don't back that up...

 

Quote

Yesterday, however, according to a major Ukrainian news site, TSN.ua, the website of the President of Russia’s Council on Civil Society and Human Rights (shortened to President’s Human Rights Council) posted a report that was quickly taken down as if it were toxic radioactive waste. According to this purported report about the March referendum to annex Crimea, the turnout of Crimean voters was only 30 percent. And of these, only half voted for the referendum–meaning only 15 percent of Crimean citizens voted for annexation.

 

Quote

We can debate the extent of fraud in the March 16 referendum, but only the Council’s highest estimate just yields the fifty percent turnout ratio normally required for major referendums. What counts is that the Putin regime solemnly announced to the world that 82 percent of the Crimean people voted to join Mother Russia, and many in the West swallowed this whopper. At best, according to Putin’s own council, only 30 percent did.

 

Anyway all a moot point as any Russian election is just a PR attempt to dupe the world...

 

[Holien]

1 minute ago, Carolus said:

And maybe Ukraine will also eventually adjust their targeting to the most expensive and useful parts of the Russian energy and railway grid - unless the Western powers really wagged their fingers and declared that as forbidden.

I am hoping this will be the case and the Western Powers can't stop Ukraine from using home grown weapons doing whatever they wish..

In fact I think Macron might even be fully behind this now to end the war quickly...

As I keep asking "ARE WE THERE YET!!!!"

God do I hope so....

[alison]

10 hours ago, Kraft said:

If anyone here has knowledge and is interested in technical info on Radio, EW, missile, and drones, frequencies, developments in the FPV arms race, etc, I have this channel to share. Sadly its content surpasses my knowledge on the matter.

Do we have any radio grogs in the house? When I was stuck in rural Canada during COVID I messed around with an SDR listening in to local railroad and logging channels, but I was under the impression that anything serious (law enforcement and certainly military) was both digital and encrypted nowadays. This guy is talking about using non-standard frequencies, but surely that is more about mitigating jamming than interception?

In my day job it would be (and has been) front page news everywhere if someone was able to reliably intercept encrypted networking protocols, so how is it not a big deal that FPV video feeds are apparently getting hacked so easily? Are they not encrypted at all? Or is it just the custom-built CCP backdoor special version of "encryption"?

[The_Capt]

42 minutes ago, Holien said:

I am hoping this will be the case and the Western Powers can't stop Ukraine from using home grown weapons doing whatever they wish..

In fact I think Macron might even be fully behind this now to end the war quickly...

As I keep asking "ARE WE THERE YET!!!!"

God do I hope so....

I think we have been slowly amping up the targeting list pretty effectively.  By doing slow, steady and increasingly costly deep strikes Putin has been responding with “nothing to see here” because to actually admit to defence failures hurts his position.  They also have not been shock and awe, which risks both escalation and driving support into Putin’s arms.

I suspect we are going to see more of the same with a steadily expanding target list.  The Western Powers definitely get a vote as they essentially own the majority of the C4ISR architecture that enables a lot of these strikes.  The current strategy is effective as it projects a dilemma onto Putin: deny and suffer continued strikes or admit weakness to rally a broader response.  He, of course, has picked the middle ground and uses these instances to blame NATO and reframe this war as such, but that also has strategic potholes.

Ukraine (and Western) strategy of death-of-thousand-cuts is smart…so long as we actually back it up with resources to drag this thing out to a “win”.  I think any hope of a “quick war” are basically over short of a strategic collapse of the RA; however, as we have discussed that will likely mean a sudden violent political collapse in Russia itself - which is something no one who has a clue actually wants.  

[Probus]

Did Ukraine really do this or is this just propaganda?

 

[Kraft]

On 3/16/2024 at 1:42 PM, The_Capt said:

I have a serious problem with this narrative that somehow Russia “did Adiivka” and has now fully recovered.  This entire position is based on some pretty sketchy vehicle production stats, most of the info coming out of Russia itself.  As far as we can tell the RA wrecked an entire MRD at Adiivka.  This is on top of loses elsewhere.  The idea that Russia simply stamped out an entire shiny new MRD to replace it is disinformation as far as I am concerned.  Russian force quality has been on a one way trajectory from the start of this war, except for a few notable areas: UAS and ISR - and we still are not sure if these are anomalies or trends.  In other capability areas it is exactly as you describe, more older equipment. (equipment less suitable for this environment) This is due to RA losses exceeding Russian industrial capacity to generate modern equipment.  It has been noted by more than one expert that Russia is draining its Soviet legacy force pool of equipment and ammunition.

So the idea that Russia is simply shrugging off all these losses - losses that Ukraine is barely able to sustain, while quaking under the giant footsteps of an unstoppable Russia, all the while the weak and puny west sits back and watches…well this borders on propaganda not worthy of this forum.  These sorts of gross oversimplifications without any real evidence, or skewing evidence need to stop as they play directly in Russian information operations.

I suspect the Ukrainian posters who have pitched these angles are a combination of war weary and/or are thinking that by continuing to promote a desperate Ukrainian situation that we will somehow become politically motivated.  However, they are missing the very real risk that some who read this forum may take this entire narrative as a sign that Ukraine is a lost cause, and we are all out of patience with lost causes.  By continually shouting “Ukraine is dooooomed” they might just convince enough people that they are right.  The answer won’t be to “double down and support Ukraine” it may wind up being “cut out losses and move on”.   That is what makes this angle such a powerful pro-Russian tool.  Russia must make this war appear “too hard, too complicated” because we in The West hate those situations.  Any and all skewed or heavily biased assessments like these simply play into Russian hands.

Just to clarify, I do not believe these losses to be sustainable, I have repeatedly said otherwise. Russia has about 1.5-2 years at high intensity left in its storage, before it is down to production numbers only. I quoted the lowest estimation from a western intelligence group.

The issue is that in the short and medium term these losses are replaceable for russia only. After that, they are irreplacable for both but my guess is that by then drones will be so dominant that neither can do anything but dig down and try to get into the earth.

[billbindc]

12 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Yes, I think he would.

Putin's regime crack on democracy, like Luka's, Kazakh etc. are products of progressive uncertainty on part of aparatus of power, which includes a lot of fears (real or token), irrational decisions, systemic inertia and lack of real data available to ruler. In some ways, this process it is like with decision of invading Ukraine- regime is drawn into certain types of behaviour the more it is in this mud. Except the process lasts much longer here. To organize these mock elections is simpler and cheaper solution for Putin, not necessarly a proof that he would loose the real ones. Much less it is the evidence that more Russians silently opppose his regime now than in the past (like significant part of emigre liberals like to explain it).

       Real democratic processess are a lot, like throwing a coin for Kremlin- even if they would secure the vote anyway, they instinctively push away this idea. Especially in times of war, globals struggles, villain NATO barking on the corner. Even meagre democracy also needs some debates, tiresome compaigns, talking to some peasants in villages lost in Syberia...a lot of hassle, costing tonns of money and effort that should be beyond Tsar dignity *. Strange, awkward and ulitimatelly hollow ritual, good for Western hypocrites, where financial oligarchy rules anyway (at least from Kremlin perspective). Add that Putin is genuinly convinced that Americans and CIA are puting their fingers into every election around him, so- like milions of citizens remembering USSR firmly believe- people can be simply communally programmed into being "nazis" and traitors just like that.

      We will never know, but personally I had little doubt that Putin would most probably win every major election in recent Russian history even without murders and authoritarian propaganda (he would have problems with changing constitution, though)- in some scenarios, he could even rule like Orban in Hungary, just by buying media by friendly oligarchs and controlling judiciary, if not for the militaristic needs of Russian state. But it would cost a lot of effort and always bring some risk, so why even bother? There was always little to no alternatives to Putin in minds of Russians in last 20 years anyway; probably even Navalny was just a phenomena, representing some resentments against corruption but not being taken seriously enough as statesman figure in muscovite sense. So, here we are.

*Probably clips of Buffallo Man on January 4th were like a cold shower for elites of many non-democratic states on this planet; a visible confirmation what can happen if you let the mob to stick their heads too high.

There is plenty of evidence that there is a disconnect between the claimed topline numbers for Putin and what Russians actually want and clearly that disconnect is driven by coercion: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/world/europe/putin-russia-election.html

As to whether or not Putin would seize on the legitimacy of a real and decisive popular mandate, it's worth keeping in mind that victory in Ukraine can only be achieved in the capitols of the EU and in Washington DC where the image of Russia as a repressive dictatorship of the silovik-tariat is extremely useful to those demanding aid be given to the Ukrainian government. He would grab such and advantage with both hands if he could. 

[Kinophile]

 

 

[billbindc]

More grist for the Russian election mill: 

 

This means in effect that the Russian authorities had to drop 22 million votes in to get the number they wanted. Which in turn means that after all of the coercion, propaganda and maneuvering Putin was only going to get 51% of those who actually showed up to vote. What would it be in a free and fair vote? Probably somewhere we've always known Putin's bedrock is...in the high 30's. 

[Kinophile]

It's a nerf gun but still... Shiver. 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1ERDLCIWaf/?igsh=MWF4aGk1Nmd4cmQ3Ng==

 

[LongLeftFlank]

 

Anorcdata: I was visiting NYC on St Paddy's and there was a line all the away around the block waiting to vote at the Russian consulate. No idea who for, although there was a monster truck parked nearby with huge Russian flags (Romanov eagle).

...I doubt those overseas voters are being coerced.

Interesting book excerpt here, on the normalisation of evil, viz. Niemöller....

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

...And you *are* an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end?

On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have. But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work.

[Kinophile]

Ref economic grind:

 

 

[Kinophile]

Ref The Invisible Ukrainian Navy

Seababies are very easy to move overland into a new AO... 

 

Edited March 19 by Kinophile

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

There is plenty of evidence that there is a disconnect between the claimed topline numbers for Putin and what Russians actually want and clearly that disconnect is driven by coercion: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/world/europe/putin-russia-election.html

For sure they are topped, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't win anyway in fair (or semi-fair) elections. Genuine potentiall differences in these numbers- 50, 75 or 85%- are not significant from current Kremlin perspective in themselves until Putin wins; and he wins in every possible computation anyway. Most important thing is to show that society support his President in such difficult time- it's the only cause of such high ratings. He could publish more modest results, but it's safer to shore up public will a little bit.

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

As to whether or not Putin would seize on the legitimacy of a real and decisive popular mandate, it's worth keeping in mind that victory in Ukraine can only be achieved in the capitols of the EU and in Washington DC where the image of Russia as a repressive dictatorship of the silovik-tariat is extremely useful to those demanding aid be given to the Ukrainian government. He would grab such and advantage with both hands if he could. 

I doubt he see things in that way- it would be rational for sure, but not many things in this regime are.

First- emperor of "awakened" all-Russia will not be manipulating his own election ritual in a way to flatten tastes of some bootlickers in the West. Russia is stronk and mighty, so they should better deal with it "as it is" (to use Putin's own words, repeated ad nauseam). Not to mention these people in the West who want to cut support for Ukraine does not need excuses; everybody knows Muscovia is not democratic. It may actually take off pretensional burden from their shoulders and bring back clear, old version of darwinistic international politics they all love and like to talk so much about.

Second- we should free ourselves from thinking that West is point of reference in everything Kremlin did or does. It wasn't like that in the past, it is even less true today. I would even go as far to say that Putin may be ambitionally testing here how his new, "multipolar" world order works in reality. After all, West didn't care that much when dealing with other bad boys like China, Saudis, Israel etc.

Edited March 19 by Beleg85

[LongLeftFlank]

12 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Ref economic grind:

 

On the other hand, the Chinese have stuck their Very Long Strawwwww into Russia even more quickly than I expected....

[Vanir Ausf B]

 

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

For sure they are topped, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't win anyway in fair (or semi-fair) elections. Genuine potentiall differences in these numbers- 50, 75 or 85%- are not significant from current Kremlin perspective in themselves until Putin wins; and he wins in every possible computation anyway. Most important thing is to show that society support his President in such difficult time- it's the only cause of such high ratings. He could publish more modest results, but it's safer to shore up public will a little bit.

We have actual evidence that without 22 million fake votes, Putin would have hit 51% and there was intense coercion and very low turnout. That almost certainly means he would lose a fair election. 

These guys aren't magic. They are sordid, often fumbling, siloviks.

 

Edited March 19 by billbindc

[kimbosbread]

4 hours ago, alison said:

Do we have any radio grogs in the house? When I was stuck in rural Canada during COVID I messed around with an SDR listening in to local railroad and logging channels, but I was under the impression that anything serious (law enforcement and certainly military) was both digital and encrypted nowadays. This guy is talking about using non-standard frequencies, but surely that is more about mitigating jamming than interception?

In my day job it would be (and has been) front page news everywhere if someone was able to reliably intercept encrypted networking protocols, so how is it not a big deal that FPV video feeds are apparently getting hacked so easily? Are they not encrypted at all? Or is it just the custom-built CCP backdoor special version of "encryption"?

When I was more interested in such things, I believe it was basically possible to sample wifi traffic for N minutes, push the data up to AWS and use various techniques to attempt to decrypt/recover keys there. So assuming you can sample enough data on the front, it might be doable. And then you are relying on encryption keys being rotated frequently or being generated new for every communication.

[chrisl]

3 hours ago, alison said:

Do we have any radio grogs in the house? When I was stuck in rural Canada during COVID I messed around with an SDR listening in to local railroad and logging channels, but I was under the impression that anything serious (law enforcement and certainly military) was both digital and encrypted nowadays. This guy is talking about using non-standard frequencies, but surely that is more about mitigating jamming than interception?

In my day job it would be (and has been) front page news everywhere if someone was able to reliably intercept encrypted networking protocols, so how is it not a big deal that FPV video feeds are apparently getting hacked so easily? Are they not encrypted at all? Or is it just the custom-built CCP backdoor special version of "encryption"?

Not really a radio grog but I've taken a few E&M classes...

Back in the day, most of the internet wasn't encrypted, either.  It cost computing power to do that, and it's relatively recent that everything travels with TLS/SSL.

Most of the drones on both sides seem to be either consumer drones or built with consumer parts, and there has mostly not been a lot of incentive to make the video feeds encrypted.  Strong encryption requires computing power, and that takes energy from the battery that could be used to fly longer.  And at the start of the drone war it's likely that that neither side had a lot of people or equipment available to eavesdrop on drone transmissions.  March 2002 was like the beginnings of WWI aviation where enemies could just wave at each other, or maybe fire a pistol.  

Even adding some relatively weak encryption (that maybe requires less compute) would probably be sufficient for tactical security as long as the keys are unique and random for every flight - it only has to be secure against being broken in an hour or so to keep eavesdroppers from seeing what it's doing in realtime.  A reasonably capable attacker could record all the encrypted signals and break them later to look for patterns, but that doesn't help them dodge any FPV right now.

[hcrof]

16 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Not really a radio grog but I've taken a few E&M classes...

Back in the day, most of the internet wasn't encrypted, either.  It cost computing power to do that, and it's relatively recent that everything travels with TLS/SSL.

Most of the drones on both sides seem to be either consumer drones or built with consumer parts, and there has mostly not been a lot of incentive to make the video feeds encrypted.  Strong encryption requires computing power, and that takes energy from the battery that could be used to fly longer.  And at the start of the drone war it's likely that that neither side had a lot of people or equipment available to eavesdrop on drone transmissions.  March 2002 was like the beginnings of WWI aviation where enemies could just wave at each other, or maybe fire a pistol.  

Even adding some relatively weak encryption (that maybe requires less compute) would probably be sufficient for tactical security as long as the keys are unique and random for every flight - it only has to be secure against being broken in an hour or so to keep eavesdroppers from seeing what it's doing in realtime.  A reasonably capable attacker could record all the encrypted signals and break them later to look for patterns, but that doesn't help them dodge any FPV right now.

Just to add to that, encryption adds latency (lag) to the signal. I understand FPV video signals are typically unencrypted analogue signals to minimise the latency, otherwise they get harder to control due to the delay from video input, processing, sending, display, human reaction time, input, sending, processing, motor reaction time etc. it all adds up. 

[dan/california]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I've been waiting for confirmation about Russia's reliance upon things it can no longer rely upon.  Early in the war it was pointed out by many Russian economic experts that Russia had lost significant manufacturing capacity and capability because old Soviet factories were shut down in favor of much cheaper, quicker, and oddly enough superior quality substitutes from abroad.  New oil field exploration and exploitation was pointed to as being almost exclusively done by Western partnerships, for example.

This reminds me of the post WW2 historical analysis of Germany's bungling of the war against the Soviets.  An example that stands out is there was a single power plant producing most of the electricity used for tank production.  There were no spare turbines in the Soviet Union or pretty much anywhere else.  IIRC the estimate was that if the United States worked around the clock it could have replacements to the Soviet Union in about a year.  Historians pointed out that would also mean one year of severely hampered tank production.  That could have been fatal to the Soviet war effort.

Technically, Russia could lose a huge amount of its refining capacity and still keep the war going.  Realistically?  It's still Russia's main source of income and every drop of fuel taken away from the civilian market for the war will be cumulatively noticed.

As with everything... who knows when such attacks will impact something severely enough for us to see.  We also don't know what it will do to the war effort.  But at the rate Ukraine is striking these blows, I have a feeling it is "not too long" and "significant".

Steve

I keep going back to the big air force study after WW2 that said attacking refineries was the single most effective thing the strategic bombing campaign did by some ridiculous margin.

6 hours ago, Holien said:

This struck me at the start of the article..

 

So they make more from the crude and Ukraine is not targeting that production.

Certainly Russia is going to see more fuel shortages for its internal market but it is not clear cut that the drone attacks will do enough to shut down the energy market for Russia.

As the author says (he wrote article I guess before the 26th Jan) we will have to see how effective the repairs are.

 

I am hoping they are not as effective as Ukraine was in recovering from the attacks on their power grid.

It could be the smartest use of drones by Ukraine so far and perhaps have the biggest payback. (And Ukraine is already at genius level for use with the ships sunk...)

Fingers Crossed...

What I have not seen any solid information on is what infrastructure do they have to import refined products if they suddenly can't produce enough domestically? It would probably be financially ruinous in the medium term to pay for it. But if they just don't have the capacity to get gas and diesel to where it needs to go the wheels start coming off of everything, immediately, even if the militaries wheels are the last to go.

Now Ukraine just needs a drone with enough AI to hunt locomotives. That has to be the simplest moving target out there right?

 

Edited March 19 by dan/california

[dan/california]

4 minutes ago, hcrof said:

Just to add to that, encryption adds latency (lag) to the signal. I understand FPV video signals are typically unencrypted analogue signals to minimise the latency, otherwise they get harder to control due to the delay from video input, processing, sending, display, human reaction time, input, sending, processing, motor reaction time etc. it all adds up. 

As Sysrky just said the side that makes a real breakthrough in the drone war either offensively, or defensively, will just win. 

[dan/california]

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4sKPsbsW3V/

A nice clip of how Russian elections work. Apparently this gentleman thought there was more that one choice on the ballot. He is disabused of that misconception. 

I am a broken record on this, the only effective form of protest in Russia is railroad sabotage, and you only MIGHT get sent to Siberia for forever.