How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[BletchleyGeek]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'm asking all of you to keep your eyes open for any and all reports of how these tiny drones do in combat situations.  There's bound to be discussion of them soon now that Ukraine has them in their hands (er, litterally:

Steve

The last update from this guy's buddy in Ukraine had some commentary

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by BletchleyGeek

[The_Capt]

13 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The point I think you're missing is that the Russians pretended they had a modernized combined arms force, but everything on the battlefield shows that what they really have is still some sort of Cold War mashup with limited high tech capabilities.

And I would argue that the point you are missing is that on a strategic and operational level they took that “pretend force” and advanced deeply into the country they were invading and still hold over 20% of it.  We can slight their tactical capability all day (and do) and even though they have been a mess strategically and operationally there is nothing Potemkin or “cargo cultish” about the threat they pose or what they were capable of at higher levels of warfare, particularly at the beginning of this war.

It is as slippery a slope to under estimate the comparative tactical capabilities, as was demonstrated by many experts before this war.  They failed to downscale their strategic and operational assessments and we saw pretty quick the results on the ground quickly failed to meet predictions.  Hell three days into this thing we knew all of the higher level assessment were off because of what we saw on the ground.

Underestimating cuts both ways.  It is just as dangerous to try and take tactical shortfalls and upscale them directly onto the operational and strategic levels.  We have witnessed too many brilliantly conducted strategic campaigns with low quality forces in the VEO space to fall for that one.  Russian tried a form of combined arms that simply did not work; however, they still translated that into limited strategic/operational objectives.  

It was the Ukrainian way of war, supported by the west, and some emerging realities of warfare that broke the Russian system.  Ukrainian forces learned faster and better.  Without western support would we be talking about a Ukrainian offensive at all?  Without Ukrainian fast development of capability?  No, the RA was a hot mess and is a dumpster fire at this point but that was not the determinative factor in this war.  They had enough mass advantage, as ugly as it was, that if this was a battlefield of even a decade ago they might have pulled it off.  This is the biggest problem with the “Russia Sux” narrative, it is far too easy an answer.  It misses a lot of nuances and complex factors that we have literally been tracking right here.

The RA was a fumbling mess but it was at the gates of an enemy capital.  They still are resisting and will likely still be on occupied ground by this winter.  What I am on the lookout for are signs the Russians are actually learning.  For example, they bought a bunch of Iranian UAVs but they are using them as ersatz cruise missiles, not to improve their C4ISR game…which is a good sign they are still not learning.

Finally the biggest reason I am firmly against the “Russia just sux” narrative is that it encourages us to stop learning.  If that is the definitive unifying theory of this war then all phenomena can be explained by it, we have nothing left to learn.  This does nothing to inform us on the direction modern war is heading nor how we need to start thinking about it because it all boils down to “Russia Sux!”  Well 1) Russia is sucking but not everywhere, 2) that does not explain everything we have been seeing and 3) there are things happening in this war that “cargo cult” does not explain and we are way off if we start to thinking that way.

[Butschi]

1 hour ago, kraze said:

Simple:

You can see russians doing pro-war marches in various countries, Germany in particular being the weirdest example, where you see them rallying in support of genocide in the center of Berlin which should've been a huge no no alone.

But you do not see them doing any rallies in support of Ukraine. In fact usually it's everyone but russians doing it.

War, especially a genocidal one, makes things black and white - if somebody stays silent (especially in safety provided by the West) - that somebody probably simply does not exist in the first place.

No. Once again. cesmonkey said: "at least some of the refugees" to which you replied "Russians literally in every single western country prove this is not the case."

You can only prove that something doesn't apply to at least some members of a group by proving that it doesn't apply to any member of that group. That is not something I make up but. It is simple logic and that is the only thing "simple" here.

You have seen some Russians going to pro-war rallies in western countries. What you can prove that way is that there are Russians in western countries who are pro-war. You don't know if all of them were refugees. But let's assume they were. Then you can prove that not all Russians are altered by the countries and societies they live in. You don't know what fraction of the refugees they represented and the fact that you haven't seen Russian anti-war rallies doesn't mean that a) they didn't happen and b) that no Russians went to the lots and lots of anti-war rallies organized by members of their host societies.

War may make things black and white but it doesn't change that logic dictates you have to know every single Russian in every single western country to legitimately make the claim that not at least some Russians are altered by the societies they live in. So, whether you like it or not your claim is false.

[Huba]

6 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Didn't want this post by @Hubato be washed away... that's so interesting! In any case, if all this "Cold Winter" story ends up being just burning bullcrap smoke vented by the Russian propaganda machine (and its knowing or unknowing accomplices) I think that the resulting massive push for solar (up to a year waiting list in Spain for subsidized home solar installations) and basic things such as improving home insulation will be a net positive contribution to the welfare of the World.

Absolutely agree. What happens now is a shock therapy to our energy sector. Painful, but a therapy nonetheless. The only long term loss I can think of is for the chemical/ other industries that rely on the NG specifically, and not just use it as an energy source. For private residence heating, the solar/ heat-pumps are the way to go in the future, added incentive for insulating buildings will also only do us good in the longer term (although in countries like Germany and Poland, and I assume most of the northern EU, there isn't that much more to be done in this regard).
I'm also looking forward to a nuclear revival. Controversial for some, but it's already a done deal, at least in Poland - we just got offers for the second plant.

[JonS]

16 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This.  Here's where we get into the icky world of Realpolitik/Machiavellian thinking.  The most effective way to have dealt with the Taliban was to arm a bunch of local militias and pay them to kill Taliban however they saw fit.  Taliban problem would have gone away very quickly.  It would also have resulted in a lot of fighting between militias and generally kept things unstable internally so that another Taliban like group would rise up sometime down the road.

This is, in fact, how the West has operated until fairly recently.  "They might be bastards, but they are our bastards" mentality and not worrying about what "our bastards" might do further on down the road.  Let's remember that "our bastards" were the guys that later on became al Qaeda and the Taliban.

As they say around here: yeah, nah.

Kilcullen and Mills have some pretty specific recommendations about how the ANA could have been set up which respected the culture, traditions, and national capabilities (including sustainment) within which the ANA would have had to operate once NATO and the rest departed. However, none of those recommendations rely on the lazy "eh, all Afghanis are venal murderers so we just needed to train and equip and pay them to murder better" trope. The authors are, not surprisingly, very firmly in the 'you can't kill your way out of an insurgency' camp.

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, chrisl said:

Aaaaaaand we have now completed our entry into the technology world of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

 

That was such a good book.  In defence future thinking circles nanotechnology is definitely on the radar.

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

why aren't they making their opinions known?

This is a highly complex question with likely an entire eco-system of possible answers.  Fundamentally we have to accept that silence does not automatically equal support. True freedom of speech and a right to lawful protest is a tricky issue even we in Canada and the US are wrestling with. So if one comes from a nation of high oppression the impulse to protest is very often not well understood or even valued.  Plenty examples of this; did we see a massive uprising in Latino communities when US policy got draconian on illegal immigration?  How much actual diaspora marches have we seen on the Chinese Uyghurs?  How about Palestinians and current issues in Iran?  There are examples of diaspora weighing in on all of these but comparative to their populations these are very muted responses particularly when compared to Me Too and BLM. 

Does this mean that these groups support whatever crimes against humanity or injustice that is happening? Not necessarily.  Russians are coming from a highly oppressive power structure built on top of even more oppressive power structures - one could argue that the oppression is embedded into their culture at this point, having been inculcate for centuries. In fact, flip that, we all come from oppressive power government roots Russia has yet to shed them.

Lets go back to Afghanistan (sigh) - we realized early on that the insurgency was not a nice neat sub-group of Afghan society, it was more of a spectrum.  So we worked hard to get the Afghan people to rise up against the TB, which had been incredibly oppressive…and we won the war and went home (heh).  In reality most Afghans just wanted to be left alone.  Our war with the TB was like the weather, one tried to predict it but pretty much just endured whatever came.  Some Aghans took our money, or their money but there was never loyalty to either side.  So does this mean that all Afghans were TB and slathering AQ supporters…no.  Did it mean that inside every Afghan there was a US citizen yearning to come out…nope.  So what?  Well micro-social power is 1) incredibly powerful, 2) largely in stasis, locked in routine, culture and traditions and 3) has very short range, like 10km from where one is born type of stuff.  So translating that into a massive uprising/protest/movement, particularly in the direction an outside government wants is not really low hanging fruit.

I suspect just because Russian are living in relatively safe part of the world outside of Putin’s grasp that they, as a group, do not want to be singled out for anything right now. In some areas they likely support this war and buy into the Putin narrative. In others I have no doubt they oppose this war vehemently.  As to protest, there have been some but massive protest movements lie over tipping points that take a lot to build up to especially given the history and culture of power oppression in the region.  

Leaping to the “they are with us are agin us” conclusion is extremely dangerous as it will quickly alienate those who will be needed to fix Russia when this is over.  Those in the “let Russia burn camp” and support this “all Russians are evil…look they are not marching in the streets” are very emotional and letting that cloud the fact that a burning Russia is a fire that will spread quickly.  Treating all Russians as collaborators and 5th columnists is even dumber as we need Russian speakers and cultural experts, as well as political opposition for what happens next.

People are about as complex a problem as we can come up with - when I hear simple answers I stop listening.  Problem is that we are addicted to simple answers, to the point that I argue the most terrible things humans have ever done each other comes down to simple answers.  The Russians are using simple answers to try to solve their “Ukraine problem” right now and anyone promoting more simple answers in response is actually part of the problem and not the solution - and I know that isn’t where you were coming from Steve.

[Taranis]

 

[Haiduk]

UKR has struck the building of school in Kayiry village in Kherson oblast, were Kadyrov's troops were deployed and posted viseo in TikTok in previous days. 

Reportedly this was so-called "oil regiment" - special purpose police unit, formally subordinated to Rosgvardiya, involved to security of oil fields in Chechnya. Russian TG sources claimed personnel of three companies are under ruines. UKR soursrs assess enemy losses in 40 KIA and 60 WIA, but this just estimations. 

Survived after strike

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by Haiduk

[Butschi]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Finally the biggest reason I am firmly against the “Russia just sux” narrative is that it encourages us to stop learning.  

Indeed. "Russia just sux" is the Anthropic Principle of the of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

In physics we have discovered that quite a lot of basic parameters of the universe had to be relatively precisely what they are in order for life as we know it to exist. The Anthropic Principle says that maybe the parameters are just coincidence and the fact that they are what they are is due to the fact that otherwise we just wouldn't be there to observe them (which maybe already happened an infinite number of times). How do I get to the Russians from here? Well, the Anthropic Principle, just like "Russia just sux" even if it is a valid answer, cannot be accepted because there could also be deeper mechanics at work and accepting it would prevent us from finding them.

[poesel]

3 hours ago, kraze said:

You can see russians doing pro-war marches in various countries, Germany in particular being the weirdest example, where you see them rallying in support of genocide in the center of Berlin which should've been a huge no no alone.

That is indeed a problem of Democracy - everyone has the right to speak up and voice their opinion, even the dumb ones.
But you are not required to listen to them.

Disclaimer: the first sentence was ironic (such things get sometimes lost in translation...)

[chuckdyke]

1 minute ago, poesel said:

everyone has the right to speak up and voice their opinion,

To come up with this was and is a stroke of genius. Permit and ignore and carry on as usual. Autocrats are simply too stupid to appreciate this.

[Beetz]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

why aren't they making their opinions known?

 

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Fundamentally we have to accept that silence does not automatically equal support. True freedom of speech and a right to lawful protest is a tricky issue even we in Canada and the US are wrestling with. So if one comes from a nation of high oppression the impulse to protest is very often not well understood or even valued.

Does this mean that these groups support whatever crimes against humanity or injustice that is happening? Not necessarily.

I think thats true, if we we are in the realm of communication here, as like war is to communicate things. Then a reason could partially be that there is no recipient of protests right now. So who are the protests going to communicate with? Putin? He's already full of himself. The Russians in Russia? There was a huge effort being taken by their government to isolate them from real world information and to pour propaganda onto all channels. So they are hardly reached with this idea.
I mean one could also ask why aren't we protesting right now on the streets with hundreds and thousends of people against the war like during the Vietnam war for example. In the first weeks I thought protest also needed time to establish and to become a movement, but time has gone by more than enough now. So maybe the only recipient right now are our leaders and we don't want them to stop supporting Ukraine. So who is left? Maybe partially the internet as some sort of public area where you can show off your attitude, but then again your kinda stuck in that harmonized mind bubble with no recipient at all.
And partially there are still supporters for the war after all as sad as it is because them being the ones being oppressed too by the very group they support as The_Capt stated.

[billbindc]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

There's all kinds of reasons, both real and imagined, as to what is wrong with Russians who move abroad.  But the fact remains that there are MILLIONS (30 million according to this Wiki article) of them spread out amongst many dozens of countries, including all of the Western countries.  They are not controlled by Putin or his repressive regime.  They are not limited to Russian state media.  For the most part they aren't persecuted for being Russian either.

Sooo... when their country of birth is off waging a genocidal war and their new home countries so strongly supportive of the victims... why aren't they making their opinions known?  Why aren't they organizing to form some sort of opposition as the Belorussians have done recently?  Or the various peoples of Eastern and Central Europe did when under Communist rule?  At best they stay silent, at worst they overtly support Putin.

I refer back to the pole done in Lithuania that I cited.  Nearly 1/2 of the Russians living in Lithuania supported the seizure of Crimea by Russia.  Half.  That is a lot more than a fringe minority.

Again, the notion that Russians are all equally evil is false.  The notion that Russians can never shed their imperial mindset is false.  But there is a problem and it's a significant and widely held one that is unlikely to change dramatically for quite some time.

Steve

 

I think it's important to make a distinction between those Russians settled in the Baltics, Crimea, Kaliningrad, etc and those who emigrated outside of the then Soviet sphere: 

The former were clearly designed to change the demographic facts on the ground in recalcitrant areas on the empire, Ulster plantation style, and have retained many of the attitudes inherent to that function and its subsequent collapse. Of course, there is a strong element of revanchism in that group. In the Baltics, that group totals something like 1,000,000 souls. But there are more than a million Russians of some identification in Kazakhstan, Brazil, the US, Germany, Israel and of course Ukraine. In all, some 25 million Russians live outside of Putin's direct sway. Those folks are not out in the streets supporting Putin except in truly tiny numbers. Anecdotally, in my neck of the woods I don't know a single Russian who doesn't hold him in disgusted contempt. 

But contempt isn't all of it. There has been a very thorough and very long running campaign by the Putin regime to put fear into those emigres. Emigres know they are tracked quite closely if they make themselves known as opponents of the regime. Business ties to Russia are exploited against them. Friends and family are threatened. Trips to the old country become calculated gambles against the possibility of arrest. None of this is new and most of the playbook was written by the Okhrana. 

All of this is a long way to make two points: 

1. The number of Russian emigres who are supporting Putin is tiny relative to their numbers.

2. Those that do not support Putin are hesitant to do so loudly because of the very real dangers they face.

I would recommend Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan's book on the topic of Russian intelligence/emigres. It's eye opening. A link to a discussion on it here:  

 https://www.csis.org/podcasts/russian-roulette/russian-intelligence-and-political-emigres-russian-roulette-episode-93

(The protests I linked above were actually in Moscow.) 

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

And I would argue that the point you are missing is that on a strategic and operational level they took that “pretend force” and advanced deeply into the country they were invading and still hold over 20% of it.  

Advancing and holding territory does not a modern military make.  In 1914 Germany took vast amounts of territory very quickly and held large portions of it for years, but I'd hardly call the foot and horse units they did that with "modern" by today's standard.  Therefore, the mere fact that Russia's 1st phase of this war netted it some terrain that it still holds is not a good metric for determining Russia's effectiveness as a modern military.

The weak Ukrainian defenses were inevitably not going to hold the border territory against the mass of motorized Russian forces advancing along good roads.  No coordination of capabilities were necessary for the Russians to succeed in this, and in fact there were signs that it was extremely uncoordinated in practice.  However, as soon as they met up with significant resistance everything fell apart quickly.  No meaingful coordination of arms, no coordination of formations, no modification of timetables, no nothing.  To me that isn't what a modern force does, that's what a Mongol hoard with 10 days of training on how to drive vehicles and lob artillery rounds does.

 

In my prior posts I should have emphasized "modern" more heavily because there's two issues up for consideration and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive:

1. Does Russia have a military that fits the Western definition of a "modern combined arms force" that integrates all arms of warfare into a singular tool to successfully execute national priorities?
2. Does Russia have a military that can potentially wage war against a neighbor and inflict large amounts of death and destruction over a prolonged period of time?

I am strongly arguing that the answer to the first question is a qualified no and for the second a qualified yes.

Point 1 is qualified no because it has never demonstrated the ability to use modern combined arms capabilities at any significant scale with success.  Even Georgia was problematic, as the Russians themselves admitted.  The qualified part is that on a very small scale, under optimal conditions, they can pull off something like modern capabilities.  Crimea and Syria being the two examples to draw from.

Point 2 is a qualified yes because the sheer mass of destructive weaponry and joy in using them does mean they can kill a lot of people and destroy a lot of infrastructure in a neighboring country.  The qualified part is that it depends on the neighbor.  I don't think the Russians would have had the same degree of success attacking the Baltics as even the tripwire force + domestic forces + airpower would likely be enough to cause a catastrophic collapse of Russian capabilities rather quickly.  Still, though, they would likely cause more casualties and destruction upon the Baltics than anybody would want to endure, so there is that.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

We can slight their tactical capability all day (and do) and even though they have been a mess strategically and operationally there is nothing Potemkin or “cargo cultish” about the threat they pose or what they were capable of at higher levels of warfare, particularly at the beginning of this war.

I disagree.  The Russians claimed to have a force that would not make such a mess of all three levels of warfare against an inferior force defending against an attack at a time of Russia's choosing.  Western experts by and large agreed with this assessment.  And yet, they absolutely do not have such a force as demonstrated by the catastrophic failures at all levels of warfare.  Whatever successes Russia has had, and for sure it has had some, have been through blunt force trauma rather than anything else.  Again, blunt force is not what I equate with modern warfare and it absolutely isn't what was advertised by Russia to its people and the world.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

It is as slippery a slope to under estimate the comparative tactical capabilities, as was demonstrated by many experts before this war.  They failed to downscale their strategic and operational assessments and we saw pretty quick the results on the ground quickly failed to meet predictions.  Hell three days into this thing we knew all of the higher level assessment were off because of what we saw on the ground.

Underestimating cuts both ways.  It is just as dangerous to try and take tactical shortfalls and upscale them directly onto the operational and strategic levels.  We have witnessed too many brilliantly conducted strategic campaigns with low quality forces in the VEO space to fall for that one.  Russian tried a form of combined arms that simply did not work; however, they still translated that into limited strategic/operational objectives.  

Again, I suggest that they more-or-less stumbled onto those limited objectives by throwing bodies and bombs at it.  That is not what I view as the modern way of fighting, rather it's total old school (early 20th Century at best, but in some ways still tied to prior centuries). 

The danger as I see it is not recognizing that this is the way the Russians are now and for the near term are likely to be worse (due to resource depletion).  However, there is also danger in concluding that just because Russia is still fighting largely the way it fought 100 years ago doesn't mean that it will always do so.  It is absolutely possible that Russia might learn from this war in a way it hasn't from past conflicts, design a better military to match its political aspirations, and create havoc at some point in the future.  But now?  It's overplayed a weak hand and it is going to have to fold or be kicked out of the game soon.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

It was the Ukrainian way of war, supported by the west, and some emerging realities of warfare that broke the Russian system.  Ukrainian forces learned faster and better.  Without western support would we be talking about a Ukrainian offensive at all?  Without Ukrainian fast development of capability?  No, the RA was a hot mess and is a dumpster fire at this point but that was not the determinative factor in this war.  They had enough mass advantage, as ugly as it was, that if this was a battlefield of even a decade ago they might have pulled it off.  This is the biggest problem with the “Russia Sux” narrative, it is far too easy an answer.  It misses a lot of nuances and complex factors that we have literally been tracking right here.

The RA was a fumbling mess but it was at the gates of an enemy capital.  They still are resisting and will likely still be on occupied ground by this winter.  What I am on the lookout for are signs the Russians are actually learning.  For example, they bought a bunch of Iranian UAVs but they are using them as ersatz cruise missiles, not to improve their C4ISR game…which is a good sign they are still not learning.

Finally the biggest reason I am firmly against the “Russia just sux” narrative is that it encourages us to stop learning.  

Someone looking at this mess and concluding "Russia just sux" would be wrong to do so.  Coming to the conclusion that "Russia just sux" after a careful examination of all the evidence, including debate with peers, is a totally different thing.  In fact, after this is all over I'm going to be watching Russia like a hawk to see if it has truly learned anything from this war.  If it has, then I'll adjust my assessments even to the point of saying "I'm not sure Russia still sux".  This is what I did after the Russo-Georgia War, it's what I did in 2014, and it's what I did leading up to this war.  And each time I looked at Russia and distilled what I saw I came to the conclusion that they hadn't really learned, hadn't really improved, and therefore would likely fight the way they did before.  I was correct to think they didn't have what was needed to take Ukraine out of the fight, and even then I was still off the mark.  I gave them too much credit despite concluding that "Russia just sux".
 

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

If that is the definitive unifying theory of this war then all phenomena can be explained by it, we have nothing left to learn.  This does nothing to inform us on the direction modern war is heading nor how we need to start thinking about it because it all boils down to “Russia Sux!”  Well 1) Russia is sucking but not everywhere, 2) that does not explain everything we have been seeing and 3) there are things happening in this war that “cargo cult” does not explain and we are way off if we start to thinking that way.

I stand by my statement that Russia sucks at fighting a modern war.  It has a military that was superficially built to resemble a modern force capable of carrying out Russia's aggressive expansionist policy.  Whatever minor successes it has had in this war, the fact remains that the force that Western experts thought Russia had was something that existed on paper only.  As a result, Russia's national policy of expansion is dead.  It's policy of exporting terror, on the other hand, is still unfortunately still formidable.

Steve

[billbindc]

8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Like we really need a reminder that the nutty left is as unfit to have a say about national security policy as the nutty right.

Steve

True but it's good to be even handed. I think it's also accurate to say that Ukraine's center of gravity for a long war is up the street from where I live. It's important to track what those folks are getting up to. On a positive note, it's been a long time since I've seen as swift and effective reaction to a statement on Capitol Hill. 

[kevinkin]

I would add that the young Russian conscript, while bleeding out on the frozen battlefield, is most likely to cry out for mom, then maybe they just think Russia sucks: "what fools we were". The Anthropic Principle probably never comes up until the after life having a brew with Aristotle. 

[Battlefront.com]

In my previous post I said it is possible to conclude "Russia sux" and yet not turn off critical analysis.  I will attempt to prove that theory with this post

Even if the overall conclusion is "Russia sux", it is probable that such a conclusion doesn't apply equally to every aspect of this war.  Therefore, it is absolutely wrong to stop looking for what Russia is doing more right than wrong and to further identify areas of continued threat.  Here's a short list:

1. Russians will fight hard even when they don't want to or think they will survive.  There were doubts, including by me, that it still had this long standing trait going for it.
2. Tactically Russia seems to have learned and disseminated "lessons learned" to counter particular Ukrainian tactics.  The most obvious one is to avoid trying deep penetrations of Ukrainian lines, instead favoring consolidating initial gains.  Another is recognizing the threat of HIMARS and keeping supplies more mobile.
3. Although extremely wasteful with its artillery, that doesn't mean it is incapable of impressive tactical employment.  There's plenty of examples to suggest that dismissing Russian artillery response times and accuracy is an extremely bad idea.
4. It has shown that it has the ability to use EW effectively at times, though with limitations that apparently make it unwise or otherwise impractical to use full time.
5. Drone usage is generally good and limited mostly by other factors, such as generally bad ISR (drones do best when they have hints of where to operate and when), poor chains of communication, inflexible artillery doctrine, inadequate numbers, and too few operators.
6. Ability to quickly develop formidable defenses when properly resourced and manned.  Kherson is the best example of this, Kharkiv the worst.  This is important because there are two other fronts (Zaporizhzhia line and the Donbas) that Ukraine has yet to attack.  I think it would be wise to presume more Kherson than Kharkiv.
7. Russia's air defense capabilities appear to be stretched thin, but they are still formidable enough to require a significant and prolonged effort to make the skies safe for friendly air activity.
8. Although Russia's constraints on adaptability are many, they aren't absolute.  The purchasing and deployment of Iranian drones, under the direct guidance of Iranian trainers, is an example to be noted.
9. Russia's resourcefulness in reconstituting combat power, however inefficient and ultimately ineffective, should not underestimated.  They have repeatedly shown the ability to replace their losses sufficiently to avoid theater wide collapse.  The effectiveness of those replacements, both in terms of men and equipment, can be questioned, however the result of avoiding a complete failure to remain in this war (so far) is a fact.
10. Putin has successfully managed to keep domestic unrest to a minimum, even if he may be running out his margin of error to a dangerous degree.
11. Ukraine is suffering serious losses in order to regain its territory.  While Ukraine shows absolutely no signs of deterrence from continuing this war, it does have implications for how quickly it might end.
12. Russia's ability to slow and/or hide its economic decline continues to be sufficient to maintain the war while also not collapsing in the process.  For now, at least.

See, even though I think "Russia sux" I've not stopped looking for the ways Russia "doesn't sux as much"

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

23 minutes ago, billbindc said:

True but it's good to be even handed. I think it's also accurate to say that Ukraine's center of gravity for a long war is up the street from where I live. It's important to track what those folks are getting up to. On a positive note, it's been a long time since I've seen as swift and effective reaction to a statement on Capitol Hill. 

Heh... I was being flip   I do think it's very important to follow all sides of this and chide the morons who don't understand this war or support it with equal vigor

9 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

I would add that the young Russian conscript, while bleeding out on the frozen battlefield, is most likely to cry out for mom,

Who will then ask where the iPhone is that his grandparents gave him with their meager savings.  Sorry, couldn't resist (for those who don't get it, you missed a Russian mom being more concerned about an iPhone than her soldier son's state of being).

Steve

[kevinkin]

n = 1 

[Butschi]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Russia sucks at fighting a modern war.

Even if it were true there is no real statistical basis to make this statement really meaningful, I think. There haven't been many large scale modern wars around lately. On the contrary, we have repeatedly argued here that the current war is different than previous wars in many different ways.

We can only really say that currently Ukraine, equipped with western weapons, is better at fighting a modern war than Russia. There are only those two data points.

We have no clue where everyone else is on the "suckiness scale" because noone else has fought one. And so saying Russia sucks at modern war suggests there is meaningful sorting and comparing on this absolute (as in contrast to relative) scale while in fact, I think, there isn't.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

 

I think it's important to make a distinction between those Russians settled in the Baltics, Crimea, Kaliningrad, etc and those who emigrated outside of the then Soviet sphere: 

Yup, which I realized I slipped up by using Lithuania as if it was analogous to, say, the Russian populations in a Western country.

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

Those folks are not out in the streets supporting Putin except in truly tiny numbers.

I agree with that.  Also not said so far is that we don't even know how many of those pro-Russian, pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine supporters are even Russian.  For sure the far right in Europe is in love with Putin, and that cuts across all nationalities.  The march in Berlin, for example, likely had large numbers of Germans from the east marching along side in solidarity.  Just because someone waves a Russian flag and has a Z painted on their face does not mean they are Russian.

Similarly there's likely lots of Russians taking part in genera anti-Russian, anti-Putin, pro-Ukrainian protests without them revealing themselves to be Russian.  Same problem with identification as with the above.  I mean, what are they going to do... wave around a Russian flag to show their support?  Yeah, no.

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

Anecdotally, in my neck of the woods I don't know a single Russian who doesn't hold him in disgusted contempt. 

I don't doubt that, but I've had more than my fair share of arguments with highly educated Russian expats and even 1st gen Western born that share the views expressed on Russian TV.

That said, I also have had my fair share of arguments with highly educated non-Russian Westerners who share the views expressed on Russian TV.  It was all I could do to not ban them from the Forum in 2014.

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

But contempt isn't all of it. There has been a very thorough and very long running campaign by the Putin regime to put fear into those emigres. Emigres know they are tracked quite closely if they make themselves known as opponents of the regime. Business ties to Russia are exploited against them. Friends and family are threatened. Trips to the old country become calculated gambles against the possibility of arrest. None of this is new and most of the playbook was written by the Okhrana. 

All of this is a long way to make two points: 

1. The number of Russian emigres who are supporting Putin is tiny relative to their numbers.

2. Those that do not support Putin are hesitant to do so loudly because of the very real dangers they face.

I would recommend Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan's book on the topic of Russian intelligence/emigres. It's eye opening. A link to a discussion on it here:  

 https://www.csis.org/podcasts/russian-roulette/russian-intelligence-and-political-emigres-russian-roulette-episode-93

(The protests I linked above were actually in Moscow.) 

 

I readily understand all of this, including Putin's deliberate campaign to keep the diaspora quiet.  The high profile killings are only the tip of that iceberg for sure.

However, as wrong as it is to say that "all Russians abroad are as bad as all Russians in Russia, and they are all evil" it is also wrong to dismiss the cultural hold that remains in the hearts and minds of many of the Russians living well outside of Russia's traditional sphere of influence.  And it would be SHOCKING if it were anything other than that because Humans are too diverse for such easy classifications.  Even if we attempt to, we'll never have a good way of measuring it.

And yet, with all that said, I expect more from the Russians living in the West than I believe we've seen from them so far.  What Putin is doing is extraordinary and being done in their name, like it or not.  I am disappointed that the Russian expat response is not similarly extraordinary in the opposite direction.

Steve

[Beetz]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Advancing and holding territory does not a modern military make.  In 1914 Germany took vast amounts of territory very quickly and held large portions of it for years, but I'd hardly call the foot and horse units they did that with "modern" by today's standard.  Therefore, the mere fact that Russia's 1st phase of this war netted it some terrain that it still holds is not a good metric for determining Russia's effectiveness as a modern military.

The weak Ukrainian defenses were inevitably not going to hold the border territory against the mass of motorized Russian forces advancing along good roads.  No coordination of capabilities were necessary for the Russians to succeed in this, and in fact there were signs that it was extremely uncoordinated in practice.  However, as soon as they met up with significant resistance everything fell apart quickly.  No meaingful coordination of arms, no coordination of formations, no modification of timetables, no nothing.  To me that isn't what a modern force does, that's what a Mongol hoard with 10 days of training on how to drive vehicles and lob artillery rounds does.

What struck me the most by your comparison of the old prussian doctrine and russian motorized and mechanized forces performance on the battlefield is to remind me that speed without proper combined arms is very old warfare indeed.
If you look at the Blitzkrieg as the culmination of old prussian doctrinal warfare and pick the breakthrough at Sedan and advance to the channel as a classic example and compare it to the US army 1st InfDiv advances through Iraq during Desert Storm and then compare it to the Russian advances in the first three days. Then you'll come up with the same estimate around 2-2.5 km per day operational tempo for every operation although the outcomes of the first two and the later were vastly different.
I think what makes it different from a modern style fighting besides the doctrine is to sustain the tempo over a prolonged period of time which the Russians failed to achive.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Beetz

[Battlefront.com]

33 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Even if it were true there is no real statistical basis to make this statement really meaningful, I think. There haven't been many large scale modern wars around lately. On the contrary, we have repeatedly argued here that the current war is different than previous wars in many different ways.

We can only really say that currently Ukraine, equipped with western weapons, is better at fighting a modern war than Russia. There are only those two data points.

We have no clue where everyone else is on the "suckiness scale" because noone else has fought one. And so saying Russia sucks at modern war suggests there is meaningful sorting and comparing on this absolute (as in contrast to relative) scale while in fact, I think, there isn't.

I disagree.  The reason why it's so easy to point to Russia's failings is because we have solid examples to compare to.  The 1990/91 Gulf War pitted a similar Coalition force similar in size and composition as the Russians against a much larger and better equipped conventional Iraqi army.  Even though this was 30 years ago the Coalition performance was dramatically better than the Russian performance in 2022.  We can dig deeper and analyze the components of each and then compare them to each other in a way that is both fair and defendable.  Doing that shows, by comparison at least, "Russia sux" at this sort of warfare.

We can look to other battle spaces, in particular Iraq 2003+ and Afghanistan, for more examples.  Even though the circumstances of the fighting might be quite different, the components utilized by the "modern" forces are the same as those Russia is attempting to utilize now in Ukraine.  Again, the results are highly unfavorable to Russia.

Steve

[Beleg85]

46 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Even if it were true there is no real statistical basis to make this statement really meaningful, I think. There haven't been many large scale modern wars around lately. On the contrary, we have repeatedly argued here that the current war is different than previous wars in many different ways.

We can only really say that currently Ukraine, equipped with western weapons, is better at fighting a modern war than Russia. There are only those two data points.

We have no clue where everyone else is on the "suckiness scale" because noone else has fought one. And so saying Russia sucks at modern war suggests there is meaningful sorting and comparing on this absolute (as in contrast to relative) scale while in fact, I think, there isn't.

Ekhmm....you know human societies are not computer nodes, right? That is why we developed social sciences like anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies and so on. Because we cannot simply apply mathematical thinking to describe living human beings. Well, some "geopoliticians" try, but they usually fail miserably.

And Russians do sucks at war. Chechnya was good example of it. Their whole mindset, even if we exclude influence of rotten system like corruption, ineffective cadres etc. ; all of it is based on disregard for life of own soldiers and civilians alike. Which is cultural issue that (paradoxially) is not helpfful in complex endevours like waging war.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Beleg85