How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Kinophile]

30 minutes ago, sfhand said:

And there in lies the rub.

I don't think this thread is the Magnum Opus of the war. I know you and a lot of similar minded people spent countless hours writing it and think it is more right than wrong, if not 100% right, one poster even said Historians will reference it. That sounds an awful lot like hubris to me, but what do I know, time will tell.

And yes, this mindset does remind me of this place during the Iraq war, hat tip to panzermartin.

Since you choose to brand me as a troll it is clear what you have in mind. As a result I will leave this thread and most likely the forum with the knowledge that my opinion only matters to you when I support your business or when I agree with your politics. Note to those who can't differentiate between one stating their intended course of action and a promise, this is not a promise.

You have a great day Steve, I'm out. (my consistent use of this type parting remark is intended to convey that I respect you as a human being and that we are all more than what we write on the internet, apparently I am alone in this thinking as well)

 

 

 

Promises, promises... 

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

23 plus years on this forum blown to pieces in a few short posts.  And to be honest I still have really no idea what he was going on about.  “I have doubts!”  And “I disagree”, without ever stating what his position was or was not. Weirdest flameout we have seen since Dorosh (man, there is a blast from the past.  Been so long that I am not sure I even spelled it correctly).  Well he came here to be a martyr and got what he wanted…another BFC happy customer.

 

The thing I hate most about people flaming out after so many years is that I don't want them to go out that way.  All that was asked of sfhand was to make a clear argument for his position. That's it.  Pretty basic component for a discussion.  Sadly, sfhand's disinterest in having a discussion is so extreme that he's said he'll leave the entire Forum for good.  Even ducking out of this thread isn't good enough.  Nope, it has to be the whole thing.

I don't like it when it happens, but I'm not willing to lower the bar for discussions to accommodate fragile egos who think so little of the opinions of everybody else.  There's really just no point.

Steve

[Harmon Rabb]

Maybe an unpopular opinion but I don't mind users with lets call them "alternative views" posting here once in a while.

The responses those posts get show just how hollow these kind of arguments really are.

Have a great day everyone.

[sfhand]

6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

There is an open record here.  It's pretty easy to audit what has been written in this thread and compare it against how the war has gone.  People can judge that record for themselves, but they shouldn't do so without having read it.  Which, apparently, you haven't done much of and that means you are in no position to have an informed opinion of what this thread is/isn't.

Very typical.  You came in here with a vaguely stated position that amounts to "you're all wrong", you were challenged to back that up, you refused to do so but had no difficulty restating that everybody else is wrong.  Now you are forced into showing us that we are wrong, continuing to be called a troll, go away without saying anything, or... as you just chose to do... with a haughty attitude that you're right and nobody here wants to listen to you.

You have just confirmed everything I said in my previous posts.  This has nothing to do with me or anybody else here, it has everything to do with you and your need to avoid having to defend your positions.  Far easier to just claim we're all dolts who don't appreciate your brilliance and then bugger off.  I've seen it countless times here before and in real life.

Steve

I reject wholeheartedly your mischaracterization of my one and only question. Yes, it was a question as follows, in this age of misinformation, How do you know what you know about the war? Initially you did acknowledge that, see your first reply. But since then you have been spinning a false story about what I said and what my motives are.

You do what you need to do, I will not be slandered so disingenuously by the guy with the ban stick. And yes, part of me thinks you are purposefully lying about what I wrote to get your desired result. A ban at this point, after I said I am bowing out, will make that point clear.

And everything here is predictable, your actions and statements included. You don't need to be Nostradamus to to see it.

Seriously, I hope you have a great day.

[Kinophile]

1 minute ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Maybe an unpopular opinion but I don't mind users with lets call them "alternative views" posting here once in a while.

The responses those posts get show just how hollow these kind of arguments really are.

Have a great day everyone.

You're not wrong, they do tend to help clarify some things via how people respond to their emotional conjecture with simple analysis. 

But after the first wall of text...

[Kinophile]

Just now, sfhand said:

I reject wholeheartedly your mischaracterization of my one and only question. Yes, it was a question as follows, in this age of misinformation, How do you know what you know about the war? Initially you did acknowledge that, see your first reply. But since then you have been spinning a false story about what I said and what my motives are.

You do what you need to do, I will not be slandered so disingenuously by the guy with the ban stick. And yes, part of me thinks you are purposefully lying about what I wrote to get your desired result. A ban at this point, after I said I am bowing out, will make that point clear.

And everything here is predictable, your actions and statements included. You don't need to be Nostradamus to to see it.

Seriously, I hope you have a great day.

Second promise broken. Stilllll here... 

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, Holien said:

BTW for anyone interested Check out his responses via clicking his ID on the forum. He has one supporter who has interesting views on Steve...

I seem to remember that person having a similar debating style...

Ah well, that makes sense. The “anti-Hot Thread, thread.”  So this looks like a case of “time to go in there and show these college boys a thing or two.”

Can Ukraine still lose this thing…sure.  If the US cuts off all aid including C4ISR and Europe does the same.  If Ukraine were isolated in a box with Russia, we could actually see the RA make major gains up to taking Kyiv. But Ukraine is not in a box, so no point getting too worried about it.

By all accounts Russia’s ability to run a military in this war is on a clock.  The entry costs for a modern military have gone both down and up.  Down on hardware, way up on software.  Russia is losing the former, and never really had the latter (2nd time used former/latter today…vey proud of myself). Hopefully we see some daylight on the US support front.  My hopes are on some sort of unmanned mass that we have not seen before. And maybe some sexy sleight of hand down near Kherson.

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, sfhand said:

I reject wholeheartedly your mischaracterization of my one and only question. Yes, it was a question as follows, in this age of misinformation, How do you know what you know about the war?

And how do you know what is really going on?  We've asked you to cite your sources and the best we got is Plato and the controversial Mearsheimer.

12 minutes ago, sfhand said:

But since then you have been spinning a false story about what I said and what my motives are.

I can only respond to how you present yourself.  You have the opportunity to prove my perception is incorrect, yet at every opportunity you merely reinforce my perceptions.  And if you haven't noticed, it's not just me who has formed this opinion of you.

12 minutes ago, sfhand said:

You do what you need to do, I will not be slandered so disingenuously by the guy with the ban stick. And yes, part of me thinks you are purposefully lying about what I wrote to get your desired result. A ban at this point, after I said I am bowing out, will make that point clear.

The only person who has mentioned banning you is you.  I've made no such threat.  In fact, I've done the opposite.  I've invited you, and continue to invite you, to engage in a debate by you presenting a coherent argument that you're prepared to back up.  Others have challenged you to achieve this very low bar for discussion, yet you refuse.  Instead of proving we're wrong, you instead spend your time proving we're right by refusing to display any interest in even the most basic pretense of a discussion.

12 minutes ago, sfhand said:

And everything here is predictable, your actions and statements included. You don't need to be Nostradamus to to see it.

Yup, it is predicable.  Someone comes in 2 years after this discussion started, tells us we're all full of it, then gets huffy when asked to explain why we're wrong, then gets even more bent out of shape when we're not willing to throw aside lifetime's worth of experience just because you say we should.

As I just said, I've seen this play out many times before.  As the old saying goes, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. 

And even with all of that said, you are still welcome to present a coherent position and we will gladly engage according to long established principles of debate.  But you need to present a coherent position.

Steve

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, sfhand said:

I reject wholeheartedly your mischaracterization of my one and only question. Yes, it was a question as follows, in this age of misinformation, How do you know what you know about the war? Initially you did acknowledge that, see your first reply. But since then you have been spinning a false story about what I said and what my motives are.

You do what you need to do, I will not be slandered so disingenuously by the guy with the ban stick. And yes, part of me thinks you are purposefully lying about what I wrote to get your desired result. A ban at this point, after I said I am bowing out, will make that point clear.

And everything here is predictable, your actions and statements included. You don't need to be Nostradamus to to see it.

Seriously, I hope you have a great day.

Just can’t stay away.  I think you secretly like us and want to be on this thread.  But maybe someone hurt you?  C’Mon, admit it - this thread is far more fun than that other one.

To answer you question:

Find a wide array of open source beacons.  Internet is full of them.  Our real strength here is we have people in-country who can access the RUS sphere and translate.

Filter out the clearly partisan ones.  Objectivity is out there, you just have to work. ISW, RUSI, War on the Rocks, Oryx to name a few, all have pretty solid reputations for presenting either raw data, or good professional analysis by people actually in the business.

Cross check, a lot. We usually get an X video or somesuch but one needs to get a bunch of eyes on it.  Weigh opinions and merits of actual arguments as they relate to observed phenomenon.

Find some experts. You are not an expert. An internet account does not make you one.  I am an expert.  But…and here is the main point, you don’t have to agree with me.  Instead you should weigh my assessment against other experts…somewhere in the middle is likely the best guess for a truth.

Spend some time on “what we are not seeing but should”.  A lot of clues and details in the negatives.  

Roll that all up, take notes, do the work, ask real questions.  Then keep your eyes open because this whole thing is likely going to change…and fast.

The whole point of this thread is to try and make sense of the first real conventional peer war of the 21st century.  Its aim is to try and cut through the noise and find signals.  Big muscle movements in thought at this point need big proof.  If you think Russia is winning and going to win, you need more than “well let me tell you”.

Most importantly at this point you need to shush.  Type less, read more.  Come back with some good questions in a bit and you might get some civil answers.

[dan/california]

 

[billbindc]

33 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So I know a couple people who got hit by whatever this thing was/is and this whole thing is just bizarre. In both cases they had never heard of this thing and suddenly started showing weird symptoms. Maybe it is like Gulf War Syndrome (know a couple people with that too) - a combination of factors that become so tangled that we never really can pin down a single cause.

I have heard both sides of this whole thing and it remains a mystery to me.

I am in the same boat. People are in real pain. Something happened to at least some of them. The problem is that there is no scientifically plausible explanation yet and that there is some unknown, decades old Russian super weapon out there which is frankly the least plausible idea of all given how thoroughly much of the Russian intel services have been surveilled, infiltrated, defected from. Anything is possible but caveat emptor.

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, billbindc said:

I am in the same boat. People are in real pain. Something happened to at least some of them. The problem is that there is no scientifically plausible explanation yet and that there is some unknown, decades old Russian super weapon out there which is frankly the least plausible idea of all given how thoroughly much of the Russian intel services have been surveilled, infiltrated, defected from. Anything is possible but caveat emptor.

I've never known what to make of it either.  Something is definitely going on, but so far nobody has been able to explain what it is.  The report that just came out was inconclusive as well.  My guess is that it's Russia (the pattern of attacks lean towards a large state actor) and it's a neurotoxin.  Russia has plenty of those and so it's more plausible than a wonder weapon.  But why is there no trace of the toxin even though it is being looked for?  I have no idea.

What I am pretty sure about is that US intel services have a good idea what is going on in terms of who is doing what.  Keeping quiet is the best way to get more exact information.  This is a spy game after all, so tipping one's own hand isn't generally the right move.

Steve

[Baneman]

59 minutes ago, sfhand said:

... I will not be slandered so disingenuously by the guy with the ban stick. And yes, part of me thinks you are purposefully lying about what I wrote to get your desired result. ...

Well, I don't have a ban stick and you didn't answer my queries either.
Barely even queries, more like requests for elaboration. I'd like to think I was polite about it.

It's back on page 3361 if you care to have a go.

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, Baneman said:

Well, I don't have a ban stick and you didn't answer my queries either.
Barely even queries, more like requests for elaboration. I'd like to think I was polite about it.

It's back on page 3361 if you care to have a go.

For a Scotsman you were beyond polite.  First of all, I understood what you wrote.  A Scotsman with his dander up is incomprehensible.  At least linguistically, otherwise the point gets across very effectively with various hand gestures and loud grunts

Steve

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Maybe an unpopular opinion but I don't mind users with lets call them "alternative views" posting here once in a while.

The responses those posts get show just how hollow these kind of arguments really are.

Have a great day everyone.

I wouldn't mind them much either but my lord why do they have to be so long winded? 

Folks, you can be wrong just as much in a paragraph as in a page! Try it!

[Carolus]

People, people, please.

It is perfectly reasonable important to ask ourselves sometimes: how do we know the world is actually a spheroid?

We all assume it is, but have you experienced it yourself? Humans are wrong with their assumptions about the world more often than they are right, did you consider this?

Now, you might have a thread full of possible hints towards a spheroid planet, and you have discussed it amongst yourself, to the best of your ability determining it does a lot look like it might be spheroid - with some people hoping that it turns out spheroid and others open that it isn't qhen things go wrong. But what if all of you are just subject to a well-known phenomenon of mass hallucinations, which especially affects those of low IQ, such like the people who are not myself?

And it gets worse when people are in a group for anlong time. They tell to each other that the world must be round, but what do they use? Physics? Optics? Geometry?

Do you know how many times these fields have been re-written again and again? By people in authority no less, who are well-known to be conspiratorial liars whenever you don't watch their fingers closely.

You might now wonder where my questions are going, but really, where would all you people end up if not someone like me, with one year of high-school philosophy under my belt, didn't engage you with aimless sophistry?

This is my last and only post. Have a good night everyone.

(You expected me to wish you a good day? Expectations subverted again sheeple! I will now leave to look at Hunter Biden's leaked nudes.)

[Battlefront.com]

51 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Just can’t stay away.  I think you secretly like us and want to be on this thread.  But maybe someone hurt you?  C’Mon, admit it - this thread is far more fun than that other one.

To answer you question:

Find a wide array of open source beacons.  Internet is full of them.  Our real strength here is we have people in-country who can access the RUS sphere and translate.

Filter out the clearly partisan ones.  Objectivity is out there, you just have to work. ISW, RUSI, War on the Rocks, Oryx to name a few, all have pretty solid reputations for presenting either raw data, or good professional analysis by people actually in the business.

Cross check, a lot. We usually get an X video or somesuch but one needs to get a bunch of eyes on it.  Weigh opinions and merits of actual arguments as they relate to observed phenomenon.

Find some experts. You are not an expert. An internet account does not make you one.  I am an expert.  But…and here is the main point, you don’t have to agree with me.  Instead you should weigh my assessment against other experts…somewhere in the middle is likely the best guess for a truth.

Spend some time on “what we are not seeing but should”.  A lot of clues and details in the negatives.  

Roll that all up, take notes, do the work, ask real questions.  Then keep your eyes open because this whole thing is likely going to change…and fast.

The whole point of this thread is to try and make sense of the first real conventional peer war of the 21st century.  Its aim is to try and cut through the noise and find signals.  Big muscle movements in thought at this point need big proof.  If you think Russia is winning and going to win, you need more than “well let me tell you”.

Most importantly at this point you need to shush.  Type less, read more.  Come back with some good questions in a bit and you might get some civil answers.

Thanks for that.  The world is indeed a complicated, conflicting, and sometimes deliberately misleading place.  But to posit that it's impossible to make sense of the world around us isn't grounded in fact. 

I am also endlessly amused that the people who bark the loudest about how untrustworthy information is are also the ones who claim they know the real truth.

Steve

[photon]

54 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Most importantly at this point you need to shush.  Type less, read more.  Come back with some good questions in a bit and you might get some civil answers.

Whenever you suggest that folks do this, I sit down and make a list of questions I have that I don't think I've seen answers to:

1. Trains. Are there any operative trains in theater? If so, whose and why? Surely whacking locomotives with Lancets is better than hitting individual tanks or even individual C2 vehicles. We've seen both sides targeting fixed rail infrastructure, but I haven't seen videos of locomotives taking hits. Too fast moving? Both sides keeping them far from lines?

2. What do the Ukrainian fortifications look like behind the front lines? Seen some evidence of fortification in the north, and pictures of various types of pre-fab bunkers being tested out. Are the Ukrainians laying mines in volume? If so, where?

3. In the event of a breakout (which seems really hard to fathom right now), how would you secure GLOC against what would be a pants-crappingly terrifying insurgency/asymmetrical fight?

4. Inasmuch as Russia's been able to advance recently, it's by bombing everything down to the ground along the axis of advance. How, hypothetically, would either side take and hold a large urban area with an unfriendly local population armed with FPV drones? In contrast to even a Javelin, the drones have a very small launch signature and a longer range, so you're dealing with trying to triangulate their radio emissions?

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, billbindc said:

I wouldn't mind them much either but my lord why do they have to be so long winded? 

Folks, you can be wrong just as much in a paragraph as in a page! Try it!

Sfhand did make one point that could fit your request for brevity:

"In the face of the current situation in Ukraine I find it absurd to say Russia is currently getting their *** kicked while Ukraine advances to the rear. The thing is, one doesn't need to study war their entire life to reach this conclusion. "

I posted a direct response to this:

"...if you can explain how a country with 10 times the resources went into a war expecting a victory in 3-14 days is still fighting 2 years later with 1/3rd less ground than it had at the peak of territorial seizure, I'm all ears. "

And we got crickets on this point, but walls of text about how we're all wrong and I'm going around beating people on the head with the ban stick because they don't agree with me.

I'm still willing to have yet another debate about how to define "winning" and "losing".  I mean, cripes, it's probably been a couple of months since we had one.  I don't think anything has improved from the Russian perspective, but hey... I'm open to the possibility that I've missed something.

Steve

[NamEndedAllen]

8 hours ago, Tux said:

War has a funny way of punishing equivocal responses and that cannot be the fault of those who are attacked.

This!

[photon]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'm still willing to have yet another debate about how to define "winning" and "losing".  I mean, cripes, it's probably been a couple of months since we had one.  I don't think anything has improved from the Russian perspective, but hey... I'm open to the possibility that I've missed something.

Here's my take from reading the thread and a bunch of OSINT:

This is one where I think it's meaningful to separate "Russia winning" from "Putin's regime winning". I'd suggest that on day 1 of the war, those two were in alignment: Russia wins by absorbing a large neighboring state into its sphere of influence with only targeted bloodshed (at the ruling elite). Putin's regime wins by propping up a vision of pan-Russian nationalism and empire building that cements Putin as Czar.

On day today of the war, those visions of victory are no longer in alignment. Russia has lost - they will not absorb Ukraine into their sphere of influence with only targeted bloodshed, and have actively reinforced the global ruleset by pushing Finland and Sweden into NATO and reawakening Europe to the necessity of self-defensive capability. They've also offered the west a huge opportunity to figure out what fighting a 21st century peer war looks like.

For Putin's regime, victory looks like staying in power. And he's been far more successful at that than we collectively predicted. Even Prigozhin's coup-like thing proved a manageable threat (for reasons that are unclear to me). Somehow recon-by-meat-assault isn't provoking civil unrest, &c. &c. So that one's not a loss for Putin yet. Economy still appears to be sort of functioning? Though it's hard to see how he can keep it that way indefinitely?

For Ukraine, the day 1 objective was "remain an independent and free society". That still appears to be their objective, and they're doing a yeoman's job of that. Jury's still out, though, on what the end state looks like.

[dan/california]

56 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I've never known what to make of it either.  Something is definitely going on, but so far nobody has been able to explain what it is.  The report that just came out was inconclusive as well.  My guess is that it's Russia (the pattern of attacks lean towards a large state actor) and it's a neurotoxin.  Russia has plenty of those and so it's more plausible than a wonder weapon.  But why is there no trace of the toxin even though it is being looked for?  I have no idea.

What I am pretty sure about is that US intel services have a good idea what is going on in terms of who is doing what.  Keeping quiet is the best way to get more exact information.  This is a spy game after all, so tipping one's own hand isn't generally the right move.

Steve

!00% agree on this. My guess based on zero non public information is that it a a very volatile compound that dissipates into the air quickly. With the Russians actively killing people all over Europe, like the pilot in Spain who defected, it is at least possible that someone will eventually get caught who knows something.

[NamEndedAllen]

2 hours ago, sross112 said:

Ok, so looking at the actual poll, this is typical media/political spinning.

Any evidence that sfhand and MTG are NOT the same person?

[sfhand]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

And how do you know what is really going on?  We've asked you to cite your sources and the best we got is Plato and the controversial Mearsheimer.

I can only respond to how you present yourself.  You have the opportunity to prove my perception is incorrect, yet at every opportunity you merely reinforce my perceptions.  And if you haven't noticed, it's not just me who has formed this opinion of you.

The only person who has mentioned banning you is you.  I've made no such threat.  In fact, I've done the opposite.  I've invited you, and continue to invite you, to engage in a debate by you presenting a coherent argument that you're prepared to back up.  Others have challenged you to achieve this very low bar for discussion, yet you refuse.  Instead of proving we're wrong, you instead spend your time proving we're right by refusing to display any interest in even the most basic pretense of a discussion.

Yup, it is predicable.  Someone comes in 2 years after this discussion started, tells us we're all full of it, then gets huffy when asked to explain why we're wrong, then gets even more bent out of shape when we're not willing to throw aside lifetime's worth of experience just because you say we should.

As I just said, I've seen this play out many times before.  As the old saying goes, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. 

And even with all of that said, you are still welcome to present a coherent position and we will gladly engage according to long established principles of debate.  But you need to present a coherent position.

Steve

Steve, I never said I have the answer to figuring it out... That is one of the reasons I asked. I remember your response to the question in my first post, it was something like "I don't just rely on the government and media for my information, I have other sources". I thought that was a cool answer. I didn't take you to task for it internally or externally.

In my view it is okay to not know everything and ask others how they know what they know, especially in this media environment. (I'm hoping you aren't inwardly doing Jack Nicholson's bit in a Few Good Men right now.)

At that point the pile on started (not complaining one bit) and the conversation started drifting. You participated in the drift as well. The fact that I only responded in the thread to you and Capt was an attempt to minimize the amount of time required. I have already spent way more of it than I would like on what I consider to be a fundamental misunderstanding, and if I feel that way I can only imagine what a pain in the butt this has been for you.

Trust me in this, I would have been more than happy if people had responded in a way that said something to the effect of "I understand why you might find the information issue to be so overwhelming and challenging, here's how I deal with it." We all know nothing like that happened, other than in your initial post, or maybe in some subsequent posts by others I missed. If anyone did post something to that effect I thank you and apologize for missing it.

I'm not happy you can't find any coherence in my words. As the writer I will accept my part in that, it is my failure. It would be dishonest to say the reader has no part in this misunderstanding as well. You can make of that what you will, but considering your bandwidth I will cut you a huge amount of slack. The others? Not so much...

You also labeled me a troll while misconstruing my posts to do so. That lead me to consider the possibility of a banning. I was sad to think you might do that, based on my understanding of and respect for you over the years. But life can have its disappointments, especially when it comes to people.

Of all my faults you might consider standing on principle one of them, I don't know how you feel about it. But I certainly see it as my anchor in the world. I don't consider trolling a principled activity. You don't know me, you have no way of knowing the truth of this, just as you have no way of knowing how arrogant I may be, the knife cuts both ways.

If you missed my posted apology on my misuse of the term "meta" I will do my best to repeat it here. I interpreted the word contextually (heuristics in action) and was incorrect in its meaning. Based on the actual definition of the word my posts were not really meta at all, in the sense that we all rely on our senses and thought facilities in some part to form our opinions and conclusions. This error on my part can potentially explain the charges of arrogance. This conversation could have gone differently had I not misused the word. For any misunderstanding my incorrect use of the word may have caused I apologize.

In summation, I have never said anyone of you is wrong about the war, or full of it as you wrote above. I have also never said you are right. That doesn't mean I think you are right or wrong. I'm not questioning your certainty, I was asking how you came by it. (you already answered this in your first reply which I greatly appreciated) In my view the rest is the result of projection on your part and my poor writing skill.

Perhaps you could consider thinking my heart is in the right place and see if your opinion on any of this situation changes. I mean what in my history leads you to believe I am more of an agent of chaos than any other poster?

Sorry you find my expressions of thought incoherent and not up to your standards. With that being the case, the possibility exists that you may not have understood any of the unfortunate wall of text above, which is why I bolded what I considered to be the the more important points above.

With that, thanks for your valuable time and consideration.

[photon]

1 minute ago, sfhand said:

Trust me in this, I would have been more than happy if people had responded in a way that said something to the effect of "I understand why you might find the information issue to be so overwhelming and challenging, here's how I deal with it."

@The_Capt did this very thing:

Quote

 

Find a wide array of open source beacons.  Internet is full of them.  Our real strength here is we have people in-country who can access the RUS sphere and translate.

Filter out the clearly partisan ones.  Objectivity is out there, you just have to work. ISW, RUSI, War on the Rocks, Oryx to name a few, all have pretty solid reputations for presenting either raw data, or good professional analysis by people actually in the business.

Cross check, a lot. We usually get an X video or somesuch but one needs to get a bunch of eyes on it.  Weigh opinions and merits of actual arguments as they relate to observed phenomenon.

Find some experts. You are not an expert. An internet account does not make you one.  I am an expert.  But…and here is the main point, you don’t have to agree with me.  Instead you should weigh my assessment against other experts…somewhere in the middle is likely the best guess for a truth.

Spend some time on “what we are not seeing but should”.  A lot of clues and details in the negatives.  

Roll that all up, take notes, do the work, ask real questions.  Then keep your eyes open because this whole thing is likely going to change…and fast.