How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Hapless]

49 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

What prompted Russia to withdraw from Afghanistan

IIRC: A change of Premier. Chernenko died. Gorbachev got in. Gorby wasn't keen on the war.

There were social and economic factors, like @A Canadian Cat mentions, but in a state where the repression dial goes up to 11 it's hard to see how they could be decisive.

That certainly seems to be what we're seeing today: Putin doesn't seem to care about casualties, economic damage or the potential for social unrest. Russia will pull out of Ukraine when whoever's in the Kremlin decides to and it's really not clear how Ukraine and the West can exert pressure to force that decision.

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

"The Putin regime may not seem weak on the surface, but its stability is a mirage produced by the repression it exerts."
 

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/theory-victory-ukraine

Good article.  Some of what was said there has been said here since the war started.  Basically, Russia is not unstoppable.

At the end there was one thing I think they didn't get quite right.  First they said that the West shouldn't fear nuclear escalation, and they are right to say that.  Often the analysis stops there, as if this is the only thing Western leaders are worried about.  Instead they went on to talk about the thing that some of us here (The_Capt and myself in particular) are concerned about is internal Russian instability.  The authors stated:

"The West’s general fear of instability is grounded in fact: a decisive defeat may indeed spell the end of Putinism, leaving Russia in a state of political uncertainty. But it is not the task of the West to save a criminal regime from collapsing."

This really misses the point of why there should be concern about a full Russian collapse, or even a partial one.  It's not because of some sort of desire to keep a certain world order intact, it is to prevent an even more serious threat to the current world order than the Ukraine war in isolation. 

If Russia remains intact, it is entirely possible that the regime that replaces Putin's might be even worse.  In the event of collapse, the Illicit nuclear proliferation is a real threat, prolonged and bloody civil war is another, realignment of Asiatic regions solidly into China's camp yet another, and virus like spread of instability to much of the former Soviet Union is also very possible.  There is also the possibility of the remainder of Russia turning into another North Korea or Iran (though it might not be as bad as the status quo).

I'm not saying there couldn't be some very good outcomes from a Russian collapse.  In fact, I think there's many and they are long term in nature.  But I personally am not too hopeful of how the authors see it playing out:

" The only chance Russia has to return to normalcy is through defeat, which will crush Putin’s imperial ambitions and allow the country to soberly reevaluate its path and eventually rejoin the society of civilized nations."

This is possible, of course, but in the near term I don't see it happening.

Steve

[Holien]

4 minutes ago, Hapless said:

Russia will pull out of Ukraine when whoever's in the Kremlin decides to and it's really not clear how Ukraine and the West can exert pressure to force that decision

Ukraine just has to keep fighting with support from the West...

There is no magic shortcut.

If Ukraine wants to defeat Russia they just have to keep killing Russians and destroying oil refineries.

Russia has lost they just need to accept this...

[billbindc]

7 minutes ago, Hapless said:

IIRC: A change of Premier. Chernenko died. Gorbachev got in. Gorby wasn't keen on the war.

There were social and economic factors, like @A Canadian Cat mentions, but in a state where the repression dial goes up to 11 it's hard to see how they could be decisive.

That certainly seems to be what we're seeing today: Putin doesn't seem to care about casualties, economic damage or the potential for social unrest. Russia will pull out of Ukraine when whoever's in the Kremlin decides to and it's really not clear how Ukraine and the West can exert pressure to force that decision.

It's extremely important to note that the withdrawal was made in the context of what the Soviets believed was a retrenchment in a struggle with the West that would continue into the foreseeable future while they were leaving behind a government that looked pretty durable. It looked like a wise move to a new Soviet regime that was seeing economic dislocation and political unrest but it seemed like a *very* long way from a decisive loss.

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, Hapless said:

IIRC: A change of Premier. Chernenko died. Gorbachev got in. Gorby wasn't keen on the war.

There were social and economic factors, like @A Canadian Cat mentions, but in a state where the repression dial goes up to 11 it's hard to see how they could be decisive.

That certainly seems to be what we're seeing today: Putin doesn't seem to care about casualties, economic damage or the potential for social unrest. Russia will pull out of Ukraine when whoever's in the Kremlin decides to and it's really not clear how Ukraine and the West can exert pressure to force that decision.

I think it was an "all of the above" type situation.  I'm going to toss out my own list, which is not vetted

1.  Economic situation was really bad and getting worse

2.  There was no end in sight to the war

3.  Political change where the newcomers weren't so keen about dealing with the decisions of their predecessors

4.  The West pulling far ahead in all forms of civilian and military technology

5.  Warsaw Pact was not as stable as it once was (Solidarity in Poland started only a year after the Afghan invasion).

6.  Growing sense amongst the Soviet population that they weren't living in a Worker's Paradise

7.  Growing black market challenge to the central authority's monopoly on power

Whatever the mix of reasons were, and the role each played, one thing is pretty certain IMHO... lots of concurrent challenges without a realistic path forward while the war was going on.

Pulling out of Afghanistan was absolutely the smart thing to do as that was center to many of the big problems the Soviet Union was facing.

Steve

[MikeyD]

19 minutes ago, Hapless said:

Chernenko died. Gorbachev got in.

This may be the easiest of easy outs for Ukraine. Vlad Putin is 71 in a country where male life expectancy is 69 and falling, and a year ago Putin was looking very shaky, health-wise. A successor, whatever his stripes, is less likely to have his ego tied up in prosecuting the war. Unfortunately, the waiting game can seem like an exercise in futility. I can produce a laundry list of geriatric politicians, jurists and world leaders that I want to say 'Just die already!' But they never do.

Edited May 21 by MikeyD

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think it was an "all of the above" type situation.  I'm going to toss out my own list, which is not vetted

1.  Economic situation was really bad and getting worse

2.  There was no end in sight to the war

3.  Political change where the newcomers weren't so keen about dealing with the decisions of their predecessors

4.  The West pulling far ahead in all forms of civilian and military technology

5.  Warsaw Pact was not as stable as it once was (Solidarity in Poland started only a year after the Afghan invasion).

6.  Growing sense amongst the Soviet population that they weren't living in a Worker's Paradise

7.  Growing black market challenge to the central authority's monopoly on power

Whatever the mix of reasons were, and the role each played, one thing is pretty certain IMHO... lots of concurrent challenges without a realistic path forward while the war was going on.

Pulling out of Afghanistan was absolutely the smart thing to do as that was center to many of the big problems the Soviet Union was facing.

Steve

I am trying to get inside Putin's head here, so take this with a grain of salt. Given that A Putin considers the fall of the USSR a massive historical tragedy, and B that it happened shortly after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Has Putin drawn the wrong lesson? Has he convinced himself that the problem was the withdrawal, not the near decade of grinding war that preceded it?

 

[FancyCat]

Quote

US-supplied M1A1 Abrams MBT in Ukrainian service, sporting a large amount of Kontakt-1 ERA on the hull.

 

[Joe982]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

If Russia remains intact, it is entirely possible that the regime that replaces Putin's might be even worse.

We have heard this many times.

Hitler's successor might be worse

Saddam's successor might be worse

Pol Pot's successor might be worse.

If the successor was worse they would already found a way to take over!

So no, the successor will not be worse. 

[alison]

41 minutes ago, Joe982 said:

We have heard this many times.

Hitler's successor might be worse

Saddam's successor might be worse

Pol Pot's successor might be worse.

If the successor was worse they would already found a way to take over!

So no, the successor will not be worse. 

Perhaps that depends on whether you see a dictator with absolute power as worse than a disorganized feud between independent warlords, gangsters and terrorist groups. In some places that's one of the things that keeps the dictator in power - the people (rightly or wrongly) fear anarchy even more.

[cesmonkey]

Humorous tactic:

Quote

 In reaction, Ukrainian drone operators dropped a flag in the middle of a field near the settlement, knowing the Russian commanders would send troops to remove it by any means. Attempting to do so in the open field meant certain death for those sent on this mission. The Ukrainian flag stayed for a long time due to multiple failed Russian attempts to take it down.

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Joe982 said:

We have heard this many times.

Hitler's successor might be worse

Saddam's successor might be worse

Pol Pot's successor might be worse.

If the successor was worse they would already found a way to take over!

So no, the successor will not be worse. 

I am confused here:

- Hitler never had a successor so we don’t really know.

- Saddam was deposed by a corrupt government that is torn by secretarial violence to this day.  Tough call on worse or better.

- Pol Pots party was dissolved and replaced first by the Vietnamese, and then a constitutional monarchy.

And then we have some historical examples of what worse looks like if we screw up.

- Castro

- Ruhollah Khomeini

- Pinochet 

- Manuel Noriega

- Gaddafi 

All much worse successors that the western powers had a hand in either putting in power or setting things in motion that would result in them coming to power (supporting corrupt dictators is high on the list).   Not sure on Putin, but worse is definitely always and option.

[billbindc]

27 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am confused here:

- Hitler never had a successor so we don’t really know.

- Saddam was deposed by a corrupt government that is torn by secretarial violence to this day.  Tough call on worse or better.

- Pol Pots party was dissolved and replaced first by the Vietnamese, and then a constitutional monarchy.

And then we have some historical examples of what worse looks like if we screw up.

- Castro

- Ruhollah Khomeini

- Pinochet 

- Manuel Noriega

- Gaddafi 

All much worse successors that the western powers had a hand in either putting in power or setting things in motion that would result in them coming to power (supporting corrupt dictators is high on the list).   Not sure on Putin, but worse is definitely always and option.

Added to which while we've never seen a full bore civil war in a nuclear armed state we *did* see how vicious a Russian civil war can be from 1917 until 1923. Does anyone want to seriously claim that nukes would not have been used by the Reds or Whites had they been available in that conflict? 

The rule of un-rung bells says that nobody will get credit for working to avoid that extraordinarily bad outcome but from where I sit, they certainly should.

[Jiggathebauce]

1 hour ago, cesmonkey said:

Humorous tactic:

 

Are this guys videos any good? Going by his thumbnails, Ukrainian troops should have been having tea outside the kremlin months ago.

[cesmonkey]

8 minutes ago, Jiggathebauce said:

Are this guys videos any good? Going by his thumbnails, Ukrainian troops should have been having tea outside the kremlin months ago.

The videos are pretty good. But, he mostly dwells on Ukrainian successes.

The thumbnails / headlines seems to be way more optimistic than most of content inside the videos.

[Offshoot]

19 minutes ago, Jiggathebauce said:

Are this guys videos any good? Going by his thumbnails, Ukrainian troops should have been having tea outside the kremlin months ago.

He does put a pro-Ukrainian slant on a lot of his videos and mostly reports on Ukrainian successes, though has also reported on significant losses in the past.

What he does is supply a narrative to a lot of disconnected videos and Ukrainian and Russian sources that aren't readily accessible for a particular operational region. I have found these help to understand what is going on in these areas more easily.

Most of his videos are confined to the tactical or operational level and avoid prognostications on what is going to happen. They also have been accurate so long as the source material is accurate.

Just don't look at the thumbnails, an unfortunate side effect of having to get noticed on youtube.

[chris talpas]

Decent news story on drones including segment with fpv operator, minister of military production stating importance of drones to Ukraine, and a female jeweller making fpv’s for her father’s unit.

 

[Battlefront.com]

Let's not get ourselves confusing the difference between "a worse situation" and "a worse regime".  The two are not necessarily the same thing. Using Putin's Russia as an example:

A worse situation would be a 2nd Russian Civil War that makes the first one look kind and gentle by comparison.  It spills over into neighboring countries, causing major humanitarian disasters there as well.  The shock to countries that rely upon Russian agricultural and natural resource products have their own problems to deal with.

A worse regime could be something that avoids the civil war scenario through naked, brutal crackdowns that put Russian into a North Korean type situation.  A closed, massively repressed sheep like society armed with nukes and concepts of revenge upon everybody that they believe took away their greatness.  A regime that doesn't even try to pretend to be a part of the civilized world compared to the fairly selective acts by the Putin regime.  Worse, one that isn't as militarily inept as the Putin regime is.

Both situations would be worse for the world in the near term compared to what the world has to deal with now.  It could even be worse for Ukraine, though there's a higher standard there because of how bad things are for Ukraine right now.

Relating this back to the Foreign Affairs article, THIS is what sensible people in the West should have on their minds when making decisions.  This isn't about protecting Putin, this is about protecting everybody.  Including Ukraine.

Unfortunately, Putin isn't given the West a lot of options.  I'm not in favor of throwing caution to the wind, but I don't see how this ends without either Ukraine or Russian being destroyed.  With a choice like that, I don't think there's much option but to favor Ukraine at the expense of Russia.  Let the ATACMS fly.

35 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Added to which while we've never seen a full bore civil war in a nuclear armed state we *did* see how vicious a Russian civil war can be from 1917 until 1923. Does anyone want to seriously claim that nukes would not have been used by the Reds or Whites had they been available in that conflict? 

The rule of un-rung bells says that nobody will get credit for working to avoid that extraordinarily bad outcome but from where I sit, they certainly should.

We don't even have to look that far back in time.  Most of us here were around for the 1st and 2nd Chechen Wars, where about 8% of the population is estimated to have been killed outright.  I'd guess maybe 5 times that number directly injured in some way.

If Chechnya, with its history of terrorism, had a nuclear weapon I think they would have used it.  If Russia thought it was forever going to lose Chechnya, they might use one.

Even if no nukes were used, the potential for Yugoslav civil war levels of violence and cruelty exists.

Steve

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

Added to which while we've never seen a full bore civil war in a nuclear armed state we *did* see how vicious a Russian civil war can be from 1917 until 1923. Does anyone want to seriously claim that nukes would not have been used by the Reds or Whites had they been available in that conflict? 

The rule of un-rung bells says that nobody will get credit for working to avoid that extraordinarily bad outcome but from where I sit, they certainly should.

 

48 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Let's not get ourselves confusing the difference between "a worse situation" and "a worse regime".  The two are not necessarily the same thing. Using Putin's Russia as an example:

A worse situation would be a 2nd Russian Civil War that makes the first one look kind and gentle by comparison.  It spills over into neighboring countries, causing major humanitarian disasters there as well.  The shock to countries that rely upon Russian agricultural and natural resource products have their own problems to deal with.

A worse regime could be something that avoids the civil war scenario through naked, brutal crackdowns that put Russian into a North Korean type situation.  A closed, massively repressed sheep like society armed with nukes and concepts of revenge upon everybody that they believe took away their greatness.  A regime that doesn't even try to pretend to be a part of the civilized world compared to the fairly selective acts by the Putin regime.  Worse, one that isn't as militarily inept as the Putin regime is.

Both situations would be worse for the world in the near term compared to what the world has to deal with now.  It could even be worse for Ukraine, though there's a higher standard there because of how bad things are for Ukraine right now.

Relating this back to the Foreign Affairs article, THIS is what sensible people in the West should have on their minds when making decisions.  This isn't about protecting Putin, this is about protecting everybody.  Including Ukraine.

Unfortunately, Putin isn't given the West a lot of options.  I'm not in favor of throwing caution to the wind, but I don't see how this ends without either Ukraine or Russian being destroyed.  With a choice like that, I don't think there's much option but to favor Ukraine at the expense of Russia.  Let the ATACMS fly.

We don't even have to look that far back in time.  Most of us here were around for the 1st and 2nd Chechen Wars, where about 8% of the population is estimated to have been killed outright.  I'd guess maybe 5 times that number directly injured in some way.

If Chechnya, with its history of terrorism, had a nuclear weapon I think they would have used it.  If Russia thought it was forever going to lose Chechnya, they might use one.

Even if no nukes were used, the potential for Yugoslav civil war levels of violence and cruelty exists.

Steve

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am confused here:

- Hitler never had a successor so we don’t really know.

- Saddam was deposed by a corrupt government that is torn by secretarial violence to this day.  Tough call on worse or better.

- Pol Pots party was dissolved and replaced first by the Vietnamese, and then a constitutional monarchy.

And then we have some historical examples of what worse looks like if we screw up.

- Castro

- Ruhollah Khomeini

- Pinochet 

- Manuel Noriega

- Gaddafi 

All much worse successors that the western powers had a hand in either putting in power or setting things in motion that would result in them coming to power (supporting corrupt dictators is high on the list).   Not sure on Putin, but worse is definitely always and option.

So here is the real question, is Putin Hitler, or is he Gadaffi? Gadaffi was a wildly annoying bleep, but he was mostly dangerous to his own people, mostly. Hitler on the other hand was going to keep going until he was stopped, every victory he ever won just fueled his appetite for more. So would Putin be willing to accept a half a loaf in Ukraine, or even a whole one, and decide he could spend the rest of his years in some semblance of peace? Or does every victory simply give him an appetite for more and bigger conquests? I would point out he basically got away with Crimea, and was very notably not wise enough to quit. But Crimea didn't cost half a million casualties and counting, and most of Russia's military inheritance from the USSR. I don't claim to know the answer to the question, but it is the one we really need to be asking.

 

[FancyCat]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

If Chechnya, with its history of terrorism, had a nuclear weapon I think they would have used it.  If Russia thought it was forever going to lose Chechnya, they might use one.

On what basis would Russia use nuclear weapons on Chechnya if they fail to reconquer it?! Might as well ask why didn't the Soviets just nuke the Baltics or Ukraine, or Kazakhstan. It's a freaking way off mountain republic. In what way does the loss of Chechnya bring regime risk? Would the risk of Chechnya being lost really threaten the regime more than the use of a nuclear weapon causing global condemnation and pariah status? A conclusion too far I think.

[G.I. Joe]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

- Hitler never had a successor so we don’t really know. 

Well, technically Dönitz...

[LongLeftFlank]

11 hours ago, A Canadian Cat said:

upset citizens (especially mothers of casualties). 

IIRC, the ancien regime also encouraged the Komsomol/managerial class youth to go, with the idea that it would solidify their socialist principles and toughen them up. (kind of like Great Helmsman Xi talks about today, although he isn't putting it in practice)

So the bereaved parents in this case had some clout.

...In contrast, also IIRC, Putin has been shielding the elites in the metropoles (Moscow, StP) from conscription, instead draining the rust belt towns and countryside (that are demographically way short of non-geriatric men, particularly skilled trades), as well as immigrants, criminals, etc.

The current and future effects of all this on 'Russian' society are manyfold.

****

So when we speak of avoiding a collapse of central authority postwar (or rather, following the death of Putin) we may really be talking about 'managing' a slow-mo collapse.

...or in practice, which factions we back (likely driven by who the Chinese back).

Basically, the next 'Great Game' could well feature Russia as the chessboard, not the player.

Edited May 22 by LongLeftFlank

[Letter from Prague]

This whole talk about "what about the Russian collapse, we must prevent it" makes me pretty angry.

Russia will genocide, invade, pillage, rape, murder, steal, because that's what they have always done. The list of Russian atrocities just from this latest installment is pages long, and USSR before was same or worse, and Russian Empire before was same or worse. Russian fracture and civil war just means they will for a while do this to each other and not to other people.

Yes, loose nukes are a problem, but remember that both nukes and delivery systems are difficult and extremely expensive to maintain. They would only be a problem for a short time before they stop working, and last thing every warlord of Whatever Oblast wants is the whole world going after them.

For reasons I don't quite get, people of Western Europe (especially Germany and France) and US (to lesser extent) tend to empathize more with Russian murderers than with the people of Eastern Europe the Russians terrorize. Throughout this war we have seen again and again people of West care more about not insulting, angering, embarrassing or inconveniencing Russia than they cared about Eastern European lives (which for now is Ukrainians but we know others are next).

When people talk about "we must not let Russia collapse, even at the cost of Ukraine losing the war" it is hard to not see it that way as well. That's why people see NATO as a joke, because West seems to care more about Russian feelings than about Ukrainian (and soon Estonian and others) hospitals being bombed.

Screw it. Russia should collapse into a bloody civil war (and we should take no refugees from there) and if that means Iran gets nukes and nukes Saudis so be it.

(This was written in somewhat of a bad mood.)

[Endyamon]

https://kyivindependent.com/russia-unilaterally-decides-to-change-maritime-border-with-lithuania-finland-in-baltic-sea/

I read about this on other websites yesterday night. Does anyone know what is about? Is this the usual provocation? I'm not an expert in these things

[Maciej Zwolinski]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think it was an "all of the above" type situation.  I'm going to toss out my own list, which is not vetted

1.  Economic situation was really bad and getting worse

2.  There was no end in sight to the war

3.  Political change where the newcomers weren't so keen about dealing with the decisions of their predecessors

4.  The West pulling far ahead in all forms of civilian and military technology

5.  Warsaw Pact was not as stable as it once was (Solidarity in Poland started only a year after the Afghan invasion).

6.  Growing sense amongst the Soviet population  LOWER-RUNG MEMBERS OF SOVIET POLITICAL AND SECURITY APPARATUS that they weren't living in a Worker's Paradise

7.  Growing black market challenge to the central authority's monopoly on power

Whatever the mix of reasons were, and the role each played, one thing is pretty certain IMHO... lots of concurrent challenges without a realistic path forward while the war was going on.

Pulling out of Afghanistan was absolutely the smart thing to do as that was center to many of the big problems the Soviet Union was facing.

Steve

I think this list contains 2 points which were major contributors not only to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, but to the Soviet state collapse in general.

The first one is the economic situation, which is kind of obvious. Soviet economy peaked in 1950s when it looked like SU can give the Free World economies a run for their money, but then it could not and started failing. There is however one potentially pertinent point: AFAIK the Soviet economy got a large boost in 1970s when the Middle East fuel crisis made fuel prices soar and Russian oil &gas exports actually became the Soviet economy, the rest paling into insignificance. During the 1980s a high price for oil became the make or break factor for the Soviet economic results, and their ability to support their budgets, and it is so today for the Putinist Russia. End of 80's is increased stabilisation in the Middle East, increased US  political influence among the oil producing countries, increased US domestic oil production, which creates the perspective of fuel prices going down and staying low for a long time. At that, Soviet economy tanked to the bottom & the rest we know. This makes me wonder, if at the beginning of the 2022 invasion there was a way to repeat this successful formula and wage the economic warfare against RUS in a more effective way which would already be giving significant results.  In the actual scenario, the Western counries tried to decrease their imports of oil and shrink the demand for RUS exports that way. That makes sense, however mostly in the long run. I am wondering about doing the opposite and increasing supply. Unfortunately, the Biden administration at the time was acting strongly against the oil economy, thus creating the opposite trend to the 1980's trend discussed above: conflict with Middle Eastern oil producers, ban on increasing the domestic production. I am wondering, if adopting a more flexible approach re this could have worked better. Temporarily increasing supply and driving the oil price down below the levels profitable for Russians would make them spend their reserves quicker and then force them to adopt war economy measures which are very damaging to the general economic power and potentially unpopular.

The second is less obvious. In Poland after the historians got at the post-communist archives it became quite apparent, that the commies were not particularly concerned about the hearts and minds of "the working folk of the cities and countryside", as they had been officially referred to. They were  procedures for when the proles mutiny.  What really became a problem, is that the members of the political and security apparatus themselves started to be sympathetic to the regime change. The fact, that they were the kings of the communist world and much better than the rest of the society stopped mattering as much as the fact, that in absolute terms, the colonels of militia and chairmen of local party organisations were worse off than even the lower strata of the societies in the West.  The nail in the coffin were the results of the 1989 elections (which had been intended by the commies to be just a tactical retreat and the Polish United Workers Party had very much been intended to remain the dominant political power) except not as much in general, but in the "special voting circuits" - in military and militia garrisoned units, among prison guards, etc. The opposition won even there. The obvious conclusion was that the threat of using military force as the communists BATNA became void, soldiers would not fight for them, so the gig was up. With regard to the present situation in the Ukraine war, the parallel is that it is perhaps not necessary to change the heart of the ordinary Russian on the street. But finding a way to turn the low-and middle management of the Russian state and power apparatus against Putin could be it. For the avoidance of doubt, the individual sanctions against top oligarchs will not work, too simplistic and too restricted, we are not talking about turning a few selected people against Putin, but a whole group. I actually have no idea how to achieve this.