Pick up conversation
Do you invade here often?
You have such a strong military, but I don't think you're using it to your full advantage.
If I said you had a beautiful body politic, would you vote it against me?
Well, Naftali Bennett's giving it the ol' college try now. Shabbat shalom! (I realize it's probably no longer Shabbat in Moscow. The question of what terms you can halachically offer Vladimir Vladimirovich in his campaign against imaginary Nazis on the day of rest remains academically fascinating, though.)
Member of UA negotiating delegation reported killed either for being a traitor or for being a double agent.
Feels somehow less horrific to put this in the war thread than the sports thread, but 17 people beaten to death by ultras during a soccer match in Mexico today. Just awful. It just keeps feeling like the pandemic broke our ability to be a society.
Good if wordy assessment of Putin's people. Russian. TLDR: they're not going to depose him.
https://carnegie.ru/2020/02/27/ru-pub-81158
That was some nice work by Senator Rubio today, tweeting out Zelinsky's location to the Russians. Do you think Trump put him up to it?
8 was me. One wonders why I can't figure out the Name autofill.
I'm sure Marco Rubio would be happy to reveal your identity.
I hope he does so I can tweet back at him that he sucks.
I'm ashamed of myself for turning this into sports fandom, but this is a terrific tactic from the Ukrainian defense forces.
https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1499786877448200192
"You don't like mud? Have some mud."
"(I realize it's probably no longer Shabbat in Moscow. The question of what terms you can halachically offer Vladimir Vladimirovich in his campaign against imaginary Nazis on the day of rest remains academically fascinating, though"
I am reminded of George Mcdonald Fraser's remembering s soldier in his platoon, one Private Riach, who was a Wee Free and refused to work on Sundays. "I asked him whether, during the war, he had been able to bring himself to kill Japs on the Sabbath; he ground his teeth in a distant sort of way and said that was all right, it was a work of necessity and mercy".
What do you all make of this (purported letter from FSB)?
https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1500301348780199937?s=21
I saw it mentioned by Christo Grozev (Bellingcat) here first:
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500196510054637569
He links to it on facebook and I find the google translate version easier to follow:
https://www.facebook.com/vladimir.osechkin/posts/4811633942268327
I have no idea who Igor Sushko is but I'd take Grozev more seriously.
More sports fandom:
Christo Grozev @christogrozev · Mar 4
War of words, songs and bombs: Russian offices struggle to communicate attack plans on short-wave radio, while Ukraine jams them with... their national anthem. Shivers.
https://twitter.com/christogrozev
12 is basically a major part of defense plans for the Netherlands.
Also a big part of the Nazis retreat through the Netherlands, which resulted in a lot of crop destruction and starvation in the Netherlands.
Sports fandom is a human impulse, but the photo at the top of the NYT now is of a mother and children shot dead by Russian troops while trying to flee to safety during a nonexistent ceasefire. The dire situation in Mariupol, the news of Russia recruiting more mercenaries for deployment, the stories of civilians being murdered at point-blank range, all* suggest that the elements of the Russian military (? state?) pushing terror tactics are thriving even as conventional assaults get bogged down or repelled. This is fucking disturbing, it shows that there's a pretty strong, if not universal, tendency not to give an infinitesimal shit about civilian casualties, and this in turn genuinely makes me wonder if the assumptions being used to game out nuclear risk are accurate.
I think a big part of the appeal of an actual no-fly zone (where Ukrainian planes and missiles are also suppressed) in the minds of Zelensky and others is to allow the Ukrainian military to focus on protecting civilian targets. It's frustrating to see them and NATO seemingly talking past each other about this while Russian soldiers straight-up murder children.
* executive decision not to spend 15 more minutes tracking down all these links.
I really don't understand the whole "no fly zone" thing. Once you're shooting down Russia planes aren't you just at war? Why does anyone think Russia would treat that differently from us just shooting cruise missiles at their troops?
It's not just about shooting down Russian aircraft. The first thing you need to do is suppress and eliminate Russian anti-air defenses on the ground in Ukraine, and in Belarus and Russia as well which are capable of hitting aircraft flying Ukraine. And that's war.
Something is just not connecting, though. Everyone has explained a hundred times that a nuclear power shooting down Russian planes will lead to nuclear war, and this is somehow not a satisfying or compelling answer? That's what I don't understand. Seeing the Ukrainian objection as "you are insufficiently committed to protecting civilians" at least allows me to make some sense of it, idk.
Given that Putin thinks sanctions are "akin to war", and that he thinks "we didn't do anything to you, leave our country [that you invaded in order to expand your empire]" is a threat, I don't really understand why anyone* thinks it's possible to avoid the choice between (a) letting Russia annex Ukraine, killing civilians and leveling cities to do so, or (b) getting involved in the war.
*world leaders, NATO, the UN, I don't know.
I'm not saying I WANT there to be a world war, I just don't see a way to avoid that choice when Russia is determined to interpret everything other than outright facilitation of his empire-building as acts of aggression.
Like in Iraq we fought a whole war and then *after* the war imposed NFZs. They're not something you do instead of a war.
He might have said "sanctions are akin to war" but he's certainly not behaving as though they are. Even putting nuclear weapons aside, if Russia were actually at war with NATO they'd be invading Lithuania to connect Kaliningrad to Belarus.
23 I guess either "Russia" should be "Putin" or "he" should be "its" ("her"?) but at this point the distinction seems fairly meaningless
The alternative to (a) and (b) is arming Ukraine and supplying them until they can win the war on their own. See Vietnam or the Soviet war in Afghanistan, or even the USSR on the eastern front in WWII before the US entered the war.
28- I don't think anyone is saying they aren't? That's explicitly why there isn't one.
29 Which is exactly what NATO is doing and will continue to do. But NFZs (an awful euphemism btw) are a complete non-starter.
29- That seems like the most likely thing to have the best outcome given current circumstances, I agree. I also think Putin is likely to decide that that's an act of war.
28: Well but there's definitely *some* sense in which the US fought wars with Iraq in 1991 and from 2003-2011 but not between 1992-2003.
And Russia will go nuclear if NATO gets involved in a shooting war. I don't think this is a bluff. This has been extensively war-gamed by the DOD for 40 years+.
I'm not qualified in any way besides newly acquired Twitter expertise, but maybe western decision-makers think there's a third option, which is 'wait and maybe Russia will implode'.
I've seen different threads calculating when insufficient Russian logistics lead to collapse in Ukraine or sanctions lead to collapse in Russia, and in not so long. Maybe that's the alternative to a western-enforced NFZ or let the Russians slaughter everyone.
It does seem to me that if anyone else has different military goals in Russia (not me! not us!), it'd be a good time to start a second front.
Time for Finland to reclaim St. Petersburg!
(No. I am not serious. But I have heard Finns describe St. Petersburg as stolen. No, I don't care enough to analyze that claim.)
My dad is convinced that at some point the Russian generals and/or politicians will stage a coup but I have less faith in that solution. Although I do love a good deus ex machina.
I was reading all about St Petersburg on Wikipedia the other day, for various reasons, and it WAS stolen! It's built on a Swedish fort, etc. But in the same era that we were stealing the entire US, so that argument doesn't seem super colorable to me
The problem is if it's in Russia proper almost certainly you're going to see at least a tactical nuclear response. So that leaves a Belorussian revolution or Georgia trying to reclaim its territory. The former got crushed last year which is why this is all happening now anyway.
And once it goes 'tactical' it'll go strategic right quick.
Just about everything's been stolen at least once. Not many exceptions (some islands in the Atlantic, maybe Tonga?).
37 is the big hope, Putin definitely won't sit near his defense minister because he's afraid he'll get killed.
42 to 31, just in case it wasn't clear.
42 to 31, just in case it wasn't clear.
The people who have their place stolen remember it for ages.
My other theory about the "close the skies!" plea is that Ukrainian leadership think (possibly due to stress-induced delusions?) there's a chance Russia will go nuclear even without NATO intervention. I can't quite believe that they'd be delusional enough to really think 34 is not the case.
47 They're desperate. I don't blame them. But it's a complete non-starter.
The weird thing about the whole "close the skies" issue is that Russia hasn't been flying much. From "Task and Purpose":
"Given how much Russian forces have suffered from the lack of air cover makes it difficult to understand why so much Russian airpower remains on the sidelines. However, Bronk had a few guesses: a limited number of precision-guided munitions; poor coordination with ground-based air defenses; low number of flying hours; and perhaps a hesitancy not to disabuse notions of foreign observers that the Russian air force has modernized and professionalized in recent years.
The first explanation, a shortage of air-delivered precision-guided munitions, means that Russia has a limited ability to carry out accurate airstrikes in support of ground troops. During Russia's participation in the Syrian Civil War, only one of its aircraft, the Su-34 fighter-bomber, regularly used precision-guided munitions, Bronk explained, and even that aircraft often used unguided bombs and rockets.
"This not only indicates a very limited familiarity with PGMs among most Russian fighter crews, but also reinforces the widely accepted theory that the Russian air-delivered PGM stockpile is very limited," Bronk wrote."
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/how-big-is-the-russian-air-force/
BUT:
They just bombed Ukraine's Starokostiantyniv air base this morning, using some of their allegedly scarce precision-guided munitions.
Nuclear war is clearly bad for the US, it's not so clear that it's bad for Ukraine as the bombs would be going off in the US, UK, France etc. rather than flattening Ukrainian cities.
And might not lead to global nuclear winter, given the state of Russian army tires it's likely that a significant chunk of the nuclear arsenal simply doesn't work.
If it goes tactical first, which would be most likely it would probably start in Ukrainian cities. This is just nuts.
Slate pitch: Nuke the global warming away.
I've heard that pitch before. It isn't a longterm solution.
The hidden downside of nuclear annihilation.
Doomscrolling Twitter tells me that Belarusian units were supposed to have joined the Russian offensive in the first week. I've seen (but too far back in the timeline to link) reports that high-ups in Belarus' chain of command are resigning because they can't make their dudes move forward. Lukashenka may be wobblier than he has looked in the last year.
If Ukraine holds off the initial onslaught -- say, if Kharkiv and Kyiv and Odesa are still fighting at the end of March -- then the question becomes how long Russia can keep pushing offensive operations, or does it become the biggest frozen conflict yet?
Back in 2014, shortly after the seizure of the Crimea, I wrote that interior cities in Ukraine were to the Russia-Ukraine fighting as Poland was to Europe in 1939, "The great powers would not be able to overlook the dismemberment of a major European state. They wouldn't be able to stop it, either." I'm happy to have been wrong so far.
Thinking about how Putin shares the assumption "bomb them enough and they will lose the will to fight" with American war deciders with regard to Vietnam in the 60's, and it seems to be about as damaging an assumption in both cases.
I wonder if as people rise to the top rungs of power, specifically because they have experience of repression working domestically (if you count the Red Scare successfully cowing and marginalizing communists/socialists), they risk starting to assume the same works abroad, developing a mental block against the idea that atrocities against civilians could possibly unite them in patriotism and determination against you, the evil foreign power, even though that's a common and familiar phenomenon to most people everywhere.
I think mostly it happens to people who have lots of bombs and no other options.
Putin would probably make the calculation that if he nuked a Ukrainian city he'd get away with it. What's the response? Any direct nuclear response on Russia gives them the excuse to directly attack the responding nations. Maybe tactical nukes on Russian positions in Ukraine? Putin probably believes the strategic nukes are a sufficient deterrent to hold back a response to a single tactical attack.
My kids said they want to build a bomb shelter but I think they were mostly joking.
Maybe they killed a neighbor and want a way to hide the body?
60: "Putin probably believes the strategic nukes are a sufficient deterrent to hold back a response to a single tactical attack."
He might think that, but I fear there would be enormous pressure to respond in kind. The target would be a picked concentration of Russian forces in Ukraine already. Allowing anyone to get away with a nuclear strike would in some ways be more horrible than a measured response.*
* Says Dr. Strangelove.
On the topic of just how crazy is Putin, anyway:
https://twitter.com/andreivkozyrev/status/1500610676926005251
Slightly tangential, but this is my favorite bit (yes, I can be inappropriately amused):
2. Russian military. The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor you cannot report that to the President. So they reported lies to him instead.
Actually, this is the most encouraging bit:
"The ultimate conclusion here is that the West should not agree to any unilateral concessions or limit its support of Ukraine too much for the fear of nuclear war."
What if Russian mothers love their yachts too?
I am realizing that I need an exit strategy from constant doomscrolling. This can't actually go on all month.
Sting's "Russians" was a vocab builder for me in childhood, but it was only later that I realized the pieces of it that I liked were mostly Prokofiev. It's an extremely fascinating song when you're 7, for some values of "you." I think if I played the Youtube version now, things would happen inside me that would make radiation sickness seem like a picnic.
I didn't even know pop music when I was 7. Nobody around me listened to it. Mostly my mom sang.
65-that ultimate conclusion is persuasive? I find it terrifying!
That link is for NOT ME tyvm. That was my point in the last sentence. (But unironically, thanks.)
So ultimately, I think the thing I keep puzzling over boils down to this poorly-informed argument:
"Committing war crimes or acts of terror is not regarded as a serious military escalation, in the way that a tactical nuke would be. However, it's regarded by most people as extremely morally urgent. It is a moral escalation. The U.S. military commits war crimes frequently, as far as I can tell, and there is never any swift remedy. Justice is always necessarily deferred, apart from limited reprisal. If Russia wants to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in this engagement, and clearly they do, they still have some legitimate claim to be conducting a limited military operation within their near abroad without threatening a NATO country, and the world's remedies are limited. In effect, because war crimes can neither be prevented or swiftly punished, they don't matter, at least not in the fog of war."
What is this argument missing? PLEASE CALM ME DOWN.
I mean the important part there is "the world's remedies are limited." Yes, the world's remedies here are limited, there's not a lot of options if an idiot who has a lot of nuclear weapons decides to start shelling cities full of innocent civilians. We're basically already using all the good options we have.
Use of tactical nukes is the one thing Russia could do that would bring China, which has been fairly neutral in all this so far, fully on board with a sanctions regime. I really doubt Russia would want to do that to their one economic lifeline.
Alex Wellerstein of NUKEMAP fame is good on this https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1500660695804825603?s=21
(Coming from a place of complete ignorance on my part), I think Molly McKew is right when she says that the cold warriors have it all wrong:
"The danger is not in action from us, action that comes with clear purpose or clearly articulated purpose, but in failing to act and leaving Putin to believe a greater risk taken yields greater rewards -- and thus is worth taking.
. . .
I say if we act, we can help deal Putin a strategic defeat in Ukraine. The form that takes is largely dependent on the Ukrainians and the tools we can get into their hands in time. I say that we have never had a similar opportunity to do so, and that we should respect the choice of the Ukrainians to act on it.
Or do you imagine that we will ever have a better chance to defeat Putin than with an army of 10 million Ukrainians willing to pay the butcher's bill on our behalf?"
https://www.greatpower.us/p/there-is-no-way-back-part-1?s=w
Sadly, I don't think there's anything missing or inaccurate in 72. It's clear at this point that the Russians aren't powerful enough to actually satisfy their objectives in starting this was, but it's just as clear that they're powerful enough to destroy a lot of stuff and willing to commit plenty of war crimes, and no one else is really able to stop them. Even the highly risky escalatory actions that get bandied about wouldn't necessarily "work" in the sense of preventing war crimes from happening. There's just not much the global community can do to stop a powerful country from openly defying international norms if it really wants to.
The irony of Putin thinking Ukraine is part of Russia is that the general advice that it's a bad idea to invade Russia still applies.
There are reports that the Russians are now recruiting Syrians for urban warfare in Ukraine. This war can and likely will get still uglier.
Recent Russian gains along the southern coast also make an amphibious assault on Odessa pretty likely in the near term.
The letter in 14-16 is an interesting read. I liked the reassurance of (paraphrasing): "if Putin sits 30 feet from his own staff for safety, why would he invite nuclear annihilation?"
If it's a forgery, it does a good job capturing what it's like to work in an organization where the people at the top are out of touch with their own local reality, but that doesn't keep them from hurling new initiatives at lower-level staff while expecting results that, if they had real knowledge of their own organization, they would know could not be achieved.
It also fits with something else I saw earlier today where someone was saying the initial battle plan wasn't drawn up for the kind of war they actually started in part because of their erroneous view that Ukraine couldn't put up much of a fight, yes, but also because it's hard to plan for that kind of war when you're trying to keep too many people from knowing you're going to start one.
Other highlights from the letter for anyone who isn't going to click through: he doesn't think Russia can really mobilize for total war, because they'd have a hard time getting enough domestic support; Russia has no puppet to install and if they killed Zelenskyy they'd have no one to negotiate with; he doesn't think they have enough people for an occupation, plus he thinks resistance would be fierce; he's not convinced Russia's nukes will actually work very well if they try them (lack of maintenance, etc.); and then, sort of out of left field, he starts talking about Russia's strategy in Crimea and Donbass in 2014, suggesting that a number of things were designed to be distractions from yet other things, and now a lot could blow up in their faces - including even in Syria, where he suggests that Assad won't last long without Russian support.
Who knows what the real situation is, but I could imagine that if Russia can't maintain its positions in both Syria and Ukraine without help, and if Assad can't succeed without Russian help, then Syria has a real interest in sending people to Ukraine.
Yeah, Russia doesn't have many real friends left at this point, but Assad is definitely one of them.
Apparently, McDonalds is still operating in Russia, probably out of a deep-seated hatred for everything Thomas Friedman stands for.
Turkey could do a lot (in addition to sending more TB2 drones to Ukraine) just by ramping up anti-Assad operations in Syria.
In which case Assad will need to keep those troops in Syria
Nice to see you, fa, and appreciate reading your comments here.
Barry as military strategist is not a turn I was predicting.
90.2 Ha, you just haven't seen that side of me here. I first met ajay, chris y, Charlie W, dsquared, et al on the Blood & Treasure blog way back in the blogdom days where such matters were regularly a topic of discussion (along with a lot of China stuff, organized crime, corruption, etc.). We called ourselves 'schlactbummlers' which I suppose would translate as war tourists (or better yet perhaps, 'conflict flaneurs').
Potentially good news: https://twitter.com/moneyacademyKE/status/1500803373024657416 though this is early stages yet, it looks like that would preclude EU membership but again, this looks like an initial offer.
This was good and informative: https://twitter.com/maxbergmann/status/1500634443232563203
91: don't forget to take your conflict lobster for a walk today.
93 genuine lol. Also, Natilo! I hope you've been well.
91 And how could I forget, Alex too (and also Richard J who very infrequently pops in here as well as belle le triste who no longer does).
No NATO and giving up Crimea is a lot to give up but I think workable. Giving up Donbas seems like a much tougher ask, hard to see Ukraine going for it.
Ukraine is ineligible for NATO membership as long as it has an ongoing territorial dispute. I would think that no membership in the EU is a non-starter. I can see giving up Crimea, it's only been a part of Ukraine since 1954 I think. Donbas is another thing entirely. Maybe they would accept an internationally overseen referendum? Anyway it's a start.
Also it's a huge climbdown on Russia's part. I mean going from their maximal demands of overthrowing Ukraine's government, and even eliminating it as a state to something fairly close to the status quo ante. It would appear from this that Russia's military is close to exhaustion.
The Russian language is that Ukraine would have to be "neutral". It's obviously nothing but an attempt to back out and redo the invasion in a few years.
And hope that they can unfuck their military in the interim. Meanwhile Ukraine will be beefing up its military too. And I doubt Russia will be able to make enough headway. The incompetence seems baked in. A fish rots from the head and all that.
Status quo ante except large portions of Ukraine are blown up. This is likely just chaff to try to blunt the push for more sanctions.
97 - interestingly, if they don't give up Donbas then they can't join NATO... because of the territorial dispute over Donbas. The alternative of giving up some territory and freeing up a path to NATO seems more attractive.
I think all three conditions are worth exploring to find out what they mean.
DPR/LPR recognition: well they weren't coming back, but the question is whether it's along the current line of control, which is the status quo, or the administrative region boundary, which is a big concession of ground the Russians haven't come close to taking. first of those the Ukrainians could sign, second much less so. Also deets eg status of citizens and property, infrastructure that crosses the line.
Crimea recognition: again they weren't realistically getting it back, and Ukrainian defence plans kind of show they know this - they fairly clearly chose to trade space for time in the south and not fight before the Dnepr at best and Odessa at worst. Obviously the exact line and the deets matter but this is probably the least important.
No "bloc membership": if it's NATO and only NATO, this would be giving up something they don't have in favour of something they do - real Western support, as in planeloads of Javelin, money, intelligence information. If it includes EU/EEA it starts to be giving up everything they care about, and because those are all about domestic policy, the more strictly constructed it is, the more Russian vetoes on internal policy it involves. This is probably the most difficult and certainly the most important of the three.
now Christo Grezov from Bellingcat reckons they also asked to have some other guy imposed on Zelensky as a prime minister with upgraded powers, and if true I can't see how "oh, we'll stop bombing if you just give up democracy and accept whatever horse we choose to impose on you" is acceptable unless the Russians were to, you know, *win*.
Lavrov has occasionally talked about "NATO infrastructure" and/or a list of specific weapon systems and it would be good to find out what exactly that is. If it's nukes or some such it would then reduce to a classic arms control verification thing. If the list starts "AK-74 rifle", not so much.
103.last or ATGMs and MANPADs too for that matter
Not sure what date it is from, here is a short clip of Putin watching Dr. Strangelove with Oliver Stone via Greg Mitchell's substack.
If it includes EU/EEA it starts to be giving up everything they care about
Not to mention that the last Ukrainian president who even hinted at giving up on EU association got kicked out of office by a massive public protest movement, which is what started this whole thing off!
The NATO thing is a good point - if the deal is simply "no Ukraine in NATO" then there's nothing to stop Ukraine getting Javelins, training, etc, and, more to the point, joining other defensive alliances, along these lines https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-by-the-united-kingdom-poland-and-ukraine-17-february-2022#:~:text=The%20UK%20and%20Poland%20will,territorial%20integrity%20within%20its%20internationally. You could even draw up a Treaty of Lviv that says "NATO will treat an attack on Ukraine as an attack on NATO, and vice versa" - Ukraine still isn't in NATO, but the effect is the same.
And the fundamental problem remains, the only way that Ukraine isn't going to pursue defensive alliances is if Russia isn't threatening to invade them. So that's basically impossible now. Especially since Russia specifically already promised this once in the Budapest Memorandum.
But what is true is that the US definitely won't use nukes in response to an invasion of Ukraine, and might in response to an invasion of NATO countries. Joining NATO is more than just getting Javelins or joining a defensive alliance with Poland.
All humanitarian corridors lead to Russia . . . Okay, except for one, which leads to Zaporizhzhia, the city with the seized nuclear plant. You have to wonder what is waiting for refugees in Russia.
"Russia declared a temporary ceasefire from 10am Moscow time and said it would open so-called "humanitarian corridors" from the cities of Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkiv and Sumy, officials in Moscow announced on Monday morning. From Mariupol there will be two corridors -- one going to the Russian city of Rostov and one going west to Zaporizhzhia. From Kyiv the route is north to the Belarusian city of Gomel, and from there by air to Russia. From Kharkiv the route is to the Russian city of Belgorod, and from there by plane, train and car to temporary locations, presumably in Russia."
https://www.ft.com/content/4351d5b0-0888-4b47-9368-6bc4dfbccbf5
103 is pretty good. I believe I said somewhere in the previous thread that, having failed in their quick-decapitation plan, Russia might have to fall back on something very like 103 and rely on internal propaganda to tell Russians that it's a great victory. Since then, it's become even more clear that Russia literally doesn't have the military capability to win in a conventional sense--the logistics simply aren't there, and it sure looks like the materiel and troops are scanty as well (that video of a train carrying random panel trucks painted with Zs is legit, right?). The whole "it might take longer than expected, but Russia simply outnumbers Ukraine by too much not to win" line seems to have been grounded in a lot of assumptions that have proven false.
Unfortunately, I suspect the path to that agreement runs through Odessa and a lot more urban rubble. That is, Russia needs a signal victory to sell the folks back home and to convince Ukraine that it's worth giving up more than they want to in order to end this. Taking Odessa accomplishes this and is probably within reach, and until that happens, they'll keep shelling the northern cities (and committing war crimes to ratchet up pressure).
One thing I wonder about: in a proposed settlement, what's the role of international sanctions? It would be weird for the EU to be a party to talks, but Russia's balance of goals hinges very much on what the EU (and US of course) do after a treaty is signed. I mean, obviously there's backdoor communications and all that, but I'd think Russia would want it firmly in writing. Maybe that's actually Ukraine's key leverage: "we'll accede to something like 92.1, but if you want sanctions lifted/meaningfully reduced, you can't nix EU membership, and we're redrawing the borders in the Donbass."
Back on the tactical nuke discussion above, I think the sanctions are the actual answer: right now, everyone assumes that if/when the war ends and Ukraine still stands, then the sanctions will be reduced enough to keep the Russian economy alive. But if they launch even one nuke, I don't think the sanctions lift ever. They become a pariah state.
One other thing that I think has been weirdly under-discussed: why is there so little apparent cyber warfare happening? Wasn't that supposed to be a big Russian strength, taking out the Ukrainian power grid/communication infra? Is that something else that was overestimated, or did we somehow let them know that they should keep that weapon locked up, lest they face retaliation?
They decided to shell the nuclear plants instead.
Pickled tomatoes-- NOT cucumbers:
https://twitter.com/kgorchinskaya/status/1500840773822169090
Definitely pickled, though . . .
111: interesting. Yes, everyone was expecting that - and they've been doing it before, with things like NotPetya (which was targeted at Ukraine but just leaked into all sorts of other systems like Maersk). I don't know. Maybe, and this is just my guess, they assumed that the Ukrainians would welcome them with open arms, and so there's no point in screwing up their cyber infrastructure because it would by that point be Russian cyber infrastructure? Killing Ukraine's civilian networks is an act of economic warfare, which would only make sense if you expect the war to go on long enough for economics to matter.
Or maybe Ukrainian military networks are considerably harder to crack than civilian ones?
The thing about "oh well they can just shell Kyiv into rubble" is, once again, logistics. Artillery is the absolute devil for logistics because shells are big, charges are big, and rockets (the ones the Russians are so fond of) are huge. And Kyiv (as well as also being huge) is quite a distance from the nearest Russian railhead. This article goes into more detail https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/
but basically, in very broad terms, Kyiv is about 100 miles from the border. Two hours to get there, one hour to unload, two hours back, one hour to load up again. You can do that twice in a day, then your truck driver needs rest and your truck needs to stop for maintenance.
Now, one truck can carry one load of rockets for one launcher. Which means that if you have one truck per launcher, it can fire two salvos per day. That is not very much. FWOOSH, then six hours silence while your truck goes back and forwards, FWOOSH, and then the rest of the day is silent again.
Either you need a lot more trucks (which they don't have) or you need to pause for a long time while you build up huge stockpiles, or you need a railway.
Russia simply outnumbers Ukraine by too much not to win" line seems to have been grounded in a lot of assumptions that have proven false
Again, I'm not an expert. But my sense of things is that Russia is a large, poor, poorly-run country and things that are true about large poor poorly-run countries are also true of Russia. As part of America-bashing, a friend was saying how Russia had done so much better on COVID and I was all 'bullshit, they just aren't collecting good data' and I think that's been borne out. Similarly, if a large, poor, poorly-run country can't afford a large modern military, then they don't actually have one.
I think we're kinda blinded by a Russian mysticism/propaganda. If any of the assumptions about Russia are that they've done something extraordinary by special mystikal technique (extraordinary suppression of their subjects, extraordinary smarts and organization), my largely uninformed guess is that those are just going to fall apart and Russian phenomena are going to default to those of a large, poor, poorly-run country.
Maybe my analysis is something like, we should expect the performance of a place like Iran or Egypt or Peru. Without the mysticism, those are the parallels. If they couldn't pull this off, neither can Russia.
114.last And they have a lot less every day this goes on. And turning Kyiv into rubble would make it even harder to take (while causing a hell of a lot of civilian causalities).
"Russia needs a signal victory to sell the folks back home"
Why? They're already so deep in propaganda that you have Russian parents not believing their Ukrainian children about being bombed. Declare the mission a success- look, no more Nazis in the Ukrainian government, there's even a Jewish president now- we did it! I'm sure we still have a Mission Accomplished banner lying around we can lend them.
Maybe I'm delusional but I'm oddly optimistic it's going to be over in a couple of weeks given that last Russian overture and how well Ukraine has been doing in the field.
Russia needs a signal victory to sell the folks back home
Hard to celebrate a wartime victory if you're officially not engaged in war. I'm also fascinated by the apparent lack of attack on Odessa. Maybe the combination of it being culturally significant and known to the outside world while not being the center of political power has helped, plus the obvious geographical factors. And it looks like Russia probably can't take it, based on how the last week has gone.
117: I basically agree, but since taking Odessa would also pressure Ukraine more *and* undo some of the reputational damage their armed forces have suffered, I think they're likely to view it as a worthwhile goal.
Obviously there's also the risk that they fail catastrophically, especially if they try an amphibious assault, which is a tricky operation under even the mildest opposition. And of course 115 is right.
115 makes me think about some stuff Bret Devereaux has written, in general contexts, not his Ukraine posts, about how modern system armies require a certain kind of societal match, which is why the ones under autocrats tend to underperform. And that sure looks like what we have in Russia--and, by contrast, the Ukrainian army seems to be overperforming, presumably in part due to operating within a freer* society (but mostly because of motivation/home field advantage).
* "free" isn't exactly Devereaux's measure, but it works as shorthand--it's about building unit cohesion from heterogenous populations, allowing meaningful autonomy to lower level officers, and a few other things that are hard for autocrats like Saddam Hussein to achieve
I'm still very worried because getting troops from Assad is not what I think you would do if you were looking for a way out. Troops from Assad seem more likely what you do if you want to kill more civilians without fear that the troops might understand and sympathize with the civilians.
115: I've always* thought Russia was weaker than their reputation (which they no doubt encourage) suggests, but I didn't think they were too weak to win this war. But I also thought they'd planned for the contingency of a longer war or else why start one? I clearly got that wrong.
*Not really, but for the past couple of decades after studying some Russian history, mainly the empire.
122:
He was going to get troops from Kazakhstan (uh-- no), he was going to get troops from Belarus (again-- no) and even if they do show up, it is only 1000 soldiers. Will they be bringing Syrian equipment (to be seized or blown up)? They will be subject to the same logistical issues as the Russian troops-- with potentially greater communication problems.
115: in one really important way they've done much worse than Iran. Remember the time Iran hit Balad Air Base in Iraq and did all the drone hangars through the middle plus one people thought was a miss but turned out to have cut the fibre optic cables into the operations centre?
108: they did that in Grozny and I for one wouldn't trust them an inch.
Interview with a Ukrainian journalist, maybe not essential but interesting observations about internal politics, Biden, and the Rosgvardia "deployment" which fascinates me. "Instead of actual troops they sent, basically, pigs, people who are used to whacking protesters on the ankles with their clubs. They were clearly counting on coming in, everything falling apart--they take over and the Rossgvardia starts imposing order."
Similarly, if a large, poor, poorly-run country can't afford a large modern military, then they don't actually have one.
They could afford it, though, with the oil money. They bought a bunch of shiny new equipment; analysts knew that. It seems like a chunk of it was embezzled away, and the rest they lack the institutional capacity to deploy properly.
Why are the British royals returning Russian honors instead of striking back by giving re-gifting them to Andrew?
Christo Grozev
@christogrozev
Jesus, Ukraine just killed Gen. Maj. Vitaly Gerassimov, chief of staff of the 41 Army. At Kharkiv.
Russia, if you're listening: delete your army.
Christo Grozev
@christogrozev
This is not the worst part. In the phone call in which the FSB officer assigned to the 41st Army reports the death to his boss in Tula, he says they've lost all secure communications. Thus the phone call using a local sim card. Thus the intercept.
130-31: UKR "All your comms are belong to us."
He was younger than me and already a major general.
I always forget that is lower than a Lt. Gen., but still pretty impressive.
130. Apparently he was in charge of attacking Kharkov. Since coordination and planning is on a need-to-know basis, his death means attacking Kharkov will be less organized than it was before.
The Syrians presumably won't spike their own equipment's gas tanks or run away.
regarding Odessa, one new patrol boat sunk already. Can't imagine that a ship full of armed guys who don't want to deploy is a stable environment, no way to call in MPs.
"I don't know what kind of a bastard, idiot or scumbag you have to be to press the button for missiles to fall on Odesa," said the city's mayor, Gennady Trukhanov, in an interview at a building in the centre of the city where he has moved for security reasons.
130, 131: Apparently the Russian secure phones weren't working in that area because they had destroyed all the cell towers that they needed.
Artillery will do that kind of stuff.
Verizon just shut off 3g here, maybe to keep us safe from Russians?
delete your army.
Someone downthread amended this to "ctrl-Z your army," which pleased me. (It's a very gentle exhortation! You can just ctrl-V them somewhere else, e.g. an uninhabited but well-appointed island.)
Oh wait no, crap. Ctrl-X is "cut". Ctrl-Z the parenthetical part of comment 140.
A good point was made that Ukrainian PR has flooded the zone with examples of Russian forces being incompetent and shown up, but, outside of Kyiv, Russia has still been advancing, if pretty slowly. It helps masks that latter fact by giving the impression Russia is actively losing.
Trump's idea about putting Chinese flags on American planes and bombing the shit out of Russia is pretty fun
Always thinking outside the box, that guy
Putin tried to hide the Russian Forces by pretending they were Zorro.
SP, saw the statement of (I suspect) your vendor making the rounds on LinkedIn. I hope that project wasn't on a tight deadline. Poor vendor.
142: I am a little concerned about the time that is passing by with Russians making relatively small gains in various places without a major Ukie counter attack. this is the window to do it.
The thing is that advancing through the countryside is supposed to be the easy bit. The nightmare is having to take the cities. That's what takes months. They need the cities because that's where the railways go through (Kharkiv is a major rail junction), quite apart from the symbolic value.
I'm also fascinated by the apparent lack of attack on Odessa.
I just assumed that that's another logistics issue. Odessa is right down in the southwest, about as far from a friendly railhead as it's possible to get. It's 300 miles by road further from the railheads even than Kyiv - not two hours drive from the railheads, but eight. Going back to our rocket-artillery example, one truck gives you two FWOOSH per day on to Kyiv. One truck gives you one FWOOSH every two days on to Odessa, because he loads up, drives for eight hours, unloads, FWOOSH, and that's his day done. Next day he drives back and loads up again. Day after that he drives eight hours south, FWOOSH. To maintain the same tempo of operations would require four times as many trucks, and it's not as though they're having an easy time even supporting operations against Kyiv.
And in doing that he has to drive past the still unreduced enemy city of Kyiv, full of highly motivated Ukrainians.
I sincerely hope that the Ukrainians have a folk memory of sneaking around in the Pripet Marshes and blowing up the invader's strategic railways, because it strikes me that'll be a useful skill in the near future.
The Russians in the southwest do seem to be basically one long salient up one road, on the near side of a huge water barrier, but they've so far managed to pull that off.
And I suppose their supply lines go to Crimea, not Belarus, so not quite as drastic as in my 149 - sorry. But it is still 200 miles drive - double the distance from the Belarus railheads to Kyiv.
The least worrying thing probably is the arrival of Syrian troops, because they will of course underperform in every respect, because that's what Arab armies do, while consuming exactly as much logistics as more competent troops would. They'll actually be a net benefit to the Ukrainians, in much the same way that the V2 saved lives in London, because the resources could otherwise be spent on something more effective. (Also I rather doubt they'll enjoy winter warfare very much.)
152: Mick Ryan's twitter makes this point - the southern group is operating from a long-standing base area in Crimea, while those up north are very much not, especially the ones who started off from Belarus. https://mobile.twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1500637716601458688
147- the big concern is that their building gets destroyed. They have a collection that's been built up over many years that you can't buy anywhere else. Any individual chemical could be remade pretty easily but if you have to test 1000 it would be a real effort to regenerate them.
I hope we're not building up toward a frozen conflict where all Ukraine's major cities are encircled, clumsily but unbudgeably.
THIS WAR IS LOST (March 7, 2022)
Commentary by Kirill Rogov, a well-known liberal Russian political analyst
Translated by Ainsley Morse
https://twitter.com/WarTranslation/status/1501223445148831745
Original https://facebook.com/kirill.rogov.39/posts/7530046393679582
The translation is an image-- not text or I would paste in quotes but it is good. Also, short.
It's good to know that "epic fail" is now a international word.
156: same.
142, 148: Not only 149.1, but also Russia does not have the luxury of subjugating Ukraine at its leisure. Even aside from the sanctions--they're seeing 1990s-like inflation already, and it'll get worse every day--this isn't Stalingrad. Putin isn't getting lend-lease materials from anyone, he doesn't have infinite bodies for cannon fodder, and it's now clear that whatever industrial capacity they have doesn't make shit that works. I saw last night that (per the US, I believe, which has shown its Russian intelligence to be aces) 100% of the pre-staged troops & equipment have been deployed, and that there's no sign of troop movements elsewhere in Russia. There are no more reserves in theater, and if more come from elsewhere, they'll be marginal in quantity and quality (eg Syrians).
The reason I do share the fear in 156 a bit is that, once they're there, it's not clear to me how Ukraine forces them out, and the logistics for holding in place are presumably a lot less challenging than for advancing or active siege warfare. Basically, if all they need is food, minimal fuel, and enough shells for desultory lobs into Kyiv, I imagine they can manage those logistics. Probably economic pressure drives towards a settlement soon enough, but I don't think conditions in the field will radically reverse.
I wonder how the most effective Ukrainian weapons (Javelin, Bayraktar, maybe MANPADs) are against dug-in positions? I.e., do they have the tools to roll back fixed, but not necessarily super-strong, positions? I have literally no idea.
157: Yep, that's been more or less my take for days, maybe a week by now. I know sanctions won't last at this level forever, but I think Putin, and to an extent everyone, assumed Europe wouldn't have the stomach to do more than symbolic sanctions once the shooting is over, but people are obviously not OK with this invasion and normalization isn't going to be just a few months of dialing back down. The longer it lasts, the more war crimes committed and exposed, and the more money required to help rebuild Ukraine, the less appetite for status quo ex ante.
drives for eight hours, unloads, FWOOSH, and that's his day done
Good morning Ukraine how are you?
...
I'll be gone three hundred miles when the day is done
Via Bruce Sterling on Twitter, it's not an ekranoplan but it can still make 55 knots (that's 63 mph in land miles, or 102 in metric miles).
http://www.hisutton.com/Russian-BORA-Class-Misssile-Hovercraft.html
"Albania will rename a street in its capital Tirana where the Russian and Ukrainian embassies are located as "Free Ukraine" to honour Ukraine's resistance to war, the mayor said on Sunday."
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/albania-renames-street-capital-tirana-free-ukraine-2022-03-06/
Good story: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/world/europe/ukraine-beats-russia-mykolaiv.html
it sounds like the initial breakout from Crimea went rather like it was meant to happen towards Kyiv.
is that, once they're there, it's not clear to me how Ukraine forces them out
What if the world could get soldiers to defect? Offer them free immigration and re-settlement anywhere.
Polish planes en route: https://twitter.com/Reevellp/status/1501272278683824132 (links to gov.pl)
Semi-OT: can anyone recommend good accounts of Russia's experience in the pandemic?
The unusual public offer, posted on the website of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, blindsided U.S. officials who said they were not consulted by the Polish government ahead of the proposal.
Kirby raised the prospect that Poland's proposal could inflame tensions with Russia, which has depicted the conflict in Ukraine as one against Western aggression. Fighter jets "departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance," he said, adding, "It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it."
167: I hunted a while ago, because Russia has a particularly bad track record with infectious disease in prisons, and I truly didn't find any accounts that seemed credible (this was in no way exhaustive, just poking around a bit). I do know their vaccine shipments were pretty sketchy - recipients were reporting it was not in the form expected (ie a solid in a vial vs a liquid when the published version was a liquid . . . ).
So the US and Europe have been supplying plenty of anti-tank weapons and other smaller weapons, but apparently fighter jets are a bridge too far? Is it just the difference in degree of weapon-ness being a difference in kind, or is part of the issue that it's Poland specifically and that Russia has more of a thing about Poland and other bordering states?
Others will probably know better, but cursorily it seems to be hot(-war) potato: Poland seemed to think handing the planes off to NATO first was a managed risk, while NATO thinks this is delusional and Russia will see planes flying off a "U.S./NATO base in Germany" into Ukraine as a major escalation/casus belli, as in the statement I quoted above. Meanwhile, "Pentagon will deploy two Patriot missile defense batteries to Poland". Hopefully that's not because of heightened risk due to the MiG snafu (unlikely, but it crossed my mind).
Sorry Minivet, I think I completely misunderstood your question. And thanks, ydnew -- it is weirdly hard to find sources!
Can they push them over the border and then take-off once in Ukraine?
Paint them to look like bicycles and park them near a university.
Actually maybe some Ghost Army tactics would be a good idea. Could they just fool Russia into capturing a fake city or something?
All cities are socially constructed anyway.
That's a nice imagined community we've got over there. It would be a shame if you pointed your most expensive weapons at it.
The Guardian used to do a daily Covid news blog* along with decent incremental coverage of Covid around the world (not just in the blog update format) but I don't know of any one thing that sums up Russia's experience. The general impression I've gotten is that it's gone much worse than the government or state run media have admitted: relatively poor quality vaccine plus lots of hesitancy, poor public health response, etc.
A recent Guardian article mostly about Covid messing with the military build-up linked to this Moscow Times report based on excess mortality. The subheadline is: "Russia experienced its largest population decline in 2021 since the end of the Soviet Union."
The general impression I've gotten is that it's gone much worse than the government or state run media have admitted: relatively poor quality vaccine plus lots of hesitancy, poor public health response, etc.
Much like the way the war is going so far, that all seems very on-brand for Russia.
I wonder how the most effective Ukrainian weapons (Javelin, Bayraktar, maybe MANPADs) are against dug-in positions? I.e., do they have the tools to roll back fixed, but not necessarily super-strong, positions? I have literally no idea.
Well, MANPADS are for use against aviation and air, so they're not really relevant. Bayraktar is functionally a slow ground-attack aircraft with PGM, so pretty good but obviously only present in small quantities. Javelin and NLAW are terrific against dug in positions and have been used for this purpose for the last 20 years.
It isn't just an issue of weapons, though. It's about answering the question: does the Ukrainian army have the ability to mount large (brigade or division-level) combined-arms deliberate attacks against Russian troops which have dug in? (I would say that brigade is a minimum requirement because they'll at the very least need to be able to attack and defeat individual BTGs, and division will almost certainly be necessary)
And this isn't as far as I know something they have tried yet. They've had several successes with mounting hasty attacks against positions the Russians have just taken, mostly using dismounted infantry, but that's different. There are just too many unknowns.
Can the Ukrainians mass artillery fire in support of an attack? Can their engineers breach obstacle lines? Do they actually have functional mechanised infantry who can fight with their IFVs, rather than (as the Russians do) small terrified people in oven-ready tin boxes? How much training have their armour done to work with infantry? (This last one is really difficult) Can Ukrainian logistics support the colossal demands of a mechanised division in the offensive - thousands of tonnes of supplies a day?
Optimistically, we - the US and the UK and others - are very good at this and have now been training the Ukrainians for some years. But I don't know how much of the training has been on this kind of thing, vs. the stuff you need to fight a more limited war in the Donbas. Pessimistically, we may even have deliberately avoided teaching them combined-arms offensive warfare for fear that they would get enthusiastic and try to retake Donetsk.
This can be turned around - but it takes significant time. The only significant offensive of the entire Yugoslav war was STORM in 1995, by the Croats against the Krajina. That followed more than a year of advice and training to the Croat army by ex-US army senior officers from MPRI, and several months of buildup and preparation. But it was also far larger than any single operation Ukraine is likely to want to do - the Croats fielded 130,000 troops for that single operation.
To clarify - as a rule, you need to attack with three times as many troops as the defender has. A BTG is a battalion tactical group. Three battalions make a brigade, three brigades make a division. So if you think you're fighting an enemy who can't operate at more than battalion scale, you only need to be able to operate at brigade scale.
169: this was also extremely on-brand.
181: the TB2 drone story is as follows - Ukraine ordered 12 off the shelf for the Air Force in 2019 and a further six for the Navy that were meant to be delivered last year. They also agreed with the Turks to manufacture another 48 under licence but I don't think any of those have been delivered yet. Turkey shipped more after the war broke out - two A400 flights are documented and you might fit two drones in each. On the other hand at least two and possibly more have been destroyed so they might have 18-20 TB2s.
The really interesting question, though, is how many ground control stations they have, as you can only have as many concurrent missions as you have GCSs. By default, Bayktar ships one GCS with every three drones (in fact it comes as a package of two GCS, six airframes, maintenance tools, and video downlink terminals for forward air controllers or intelligence people to use) so the Ukrainians may be able to put up a maximum of three drone missions at any one time, providing that they haven't lost a GCS.
(The GCS looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bayraktar_TB2_of_UAF,_2019,_04.jpg which reminds me of that time my grandfather was meant to land on the beaches of Sicily with a big folding radio mast that emitted on navy, army, and air force networks all at the same time. fortunately for him the ship broke down en route.)
183: ah yes, the wonderful game of See How Fast You Can Take Down The Guyropes Before You Get DFed.
That is actually a lot more mobile-looking than I expected. I was picturing something that came in multiple ISO containers but it seems the Turks actually gave a little thought to mobility and survivability.
||
They found Shackleton's ship!
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60662541
|>
185: I still wouldn't count on hiding it from, you know, bloggers, let alone the Russian air force.
Meanwhile, meet Ukrainian State Railways' Roaming Railway Operating Headquarters Train Of Logistics: https://www.businessinsider.com/on-board-the-mobile-command-thats-keeping-ukraines-trains-running-2022-3
I wonder if anyone there had experience with the Soviets' rail-based ICBMs?
Reports now that the Russians have disconnected Chernobyl from the electricity grid, which, I'm assuming, is pretty bad. I'd imagine there's quite a high demand for power for lighting, monitoring equipment, communications, cooling, etc.
187 - the Russians have also, to my muffled delight, deployed an armoured train. https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-03-08-22/h_c1f517af308fdb069b3c511dc9d988f5
188: I saw the IAEA has lost touch with it, but I hadn't seen that it's also lost power?
Assuming that's accurate (which it may well not be).
More information here:
https://metro.co.uk/2022/03/09/ukraine-war-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-suffers-blackout-16244059/
Well, that's exciting, although I have not forgiven the Guardian for announcing a nonexistent loss of cooling accident a few days ago yet
re: 193
Yeah, I saw you tweeting about that. The Metro article seems relatively comprehensive and well sourced, though.
No more McDonald's in Russia. Or Coke.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/business/mcdonalds-russia-starbucks-pepsi-coca-cola.html
"Don't underestimate the importance of fast food chains leaving 🇷🇺. Their entry into the Russian market was in many minds a powerful symbol of the end of Soviet totalitarianism."
https://twitter.com/janedvidek/status/1501554363264913411
re chernobyl & other things nuclear, everyone do yourself a favor & read cheryl rofer - very smart, retired nuclear chemist & v clear writer.
on chernobyl - https://twitter.com/CherylRofer/status/1496870884677718026?t=nr11f-UEHwhsmOuZB7j_gQ&s=19
scroll up & down, and there is more on her timeline obvs.
her blog - https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/
Looks like the UK is going to give Ukraine Starstreaks
The IAEA is not particularly worried: https://mobile.twitter.com/iaeaorg/status/1501545859468742664
198: the cloudpunchers are going to be livid. FINALLY their missiles are getting fired at actual hostile air, and it isn't them getting to fire them.
183: I just realized I am wrong. The package is 2 GCS for 6 drones. This means a ratio of 3:1. 3 packages of 6 = 18 drones and 6 GCS, hence a maximum of six concurrent missions.
What is a cloudpuncher? Google didn't help.
202 You'll need the ARRSEPedia for that, mate
Yes, a cloudpuncher is someone who fires at aircraft and misses (hitting clouds), while a field gunner fires at enemy on the ground and misses, often hitting his own side, hence known as a "dropshort".
Railways update from the roving secret dining car headquarters of logistical awesomeness: https://www.facebook.com/Ukrzaliznytsia/photos/a.1090644594302661/5261547957212283/
I think there's one station that has gone red since yesterday, right up at the very end of a precarious salient in Donbass.
No more McDonald's in Russia.
You'd be surprised how many people owe favors to Tom Friedman.
I continue to have many questions about legitimate and effective responses to war crimes and atrocities, as of this morning. Jesus fucking Christ.
I remember a couple of "no, we really have no good options in Syria" discussions from years ago here. It's all coming back.
War is bad. Really bad. So bad that it's going to be awful to matter what you do. That's why people shouldn't start wars.
211: I tried to tell that to Vladimir, but does he listen to me? Apparently not.
Thoughtful thread about the near future of Russia's economy, concise remark from the midle, lots of detail https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501382714427166721
"Mafia is quite simple. It can't administer something complicated without either destroying the production completely or evolving to something that wouldn't be a mafia anymore. If they entered machinery production for example, they would either go bankrupt or stop being a mafia"
I shamefully never quite got the hang of what's been going on in Syria beyond civil war tragic; Assad brutal; Russia also brutal (and I could be confused even on that level). Can anyone walk me through the principled distinctions between Syria and Ukraine such that it makes sense that the US and Europe have been less engaged in Syria than they are on Ukraine? Racism, sure, is some of it but anything else?
My candidate theory is that it's a lot simpler supporting an elected government in power in Ukraine than it is supporting an insurgency against even a ghastly dictator, but I am literally lost at even the simplest facts about Syria. Anyone clearer on it than I am?
Chotiner has a good interview with another NYer writer on Syria and the comparison to Ukraine. (Not one of his gotcha interviews.)
If, like me, you've been wondering about the implications of the war for Moldova and Transnistria, this thread is good, with lots of interesting background about the very weird geopolitical situation there.
213: A friend of mine has been sharing that guy's threads and I honestly don't know what to make of them. In aggregate, they seem almost manic. The one about the Z symbol was about 10,000 words long and got pretty wild (link is to mid-thread shift to China). Another ~10K words about IR based on not being a prison bitch? I admit I didn't read all the way to the end.
I couldn't find a good old Syria thread but I did find this one from the last Ukraine invasion. Lots of mcmanus.
Starstreak and Cloudpuncher sound like they belong on the League of Shitty Superheroes.
They are already names from My Little Pony.
211 is right and also applies to pandemics. I think most of the reason people are behaving so badly is direct pandemic stuff (deaths, months of isolation, saturation coverage, kids at home for way more than months, etc), but a chunk of it is people being frustrated that there are no good options. Everyone has their own personal sense of the best way to handle it, and they don't want to hear that there are downsides--but every possible approach has downsides.
I don't know if it's all humans or if current USians are especially bad at it*, but the whole concept of tradeoffs and balancing bad outcomes seems utterly alien and unacceptable. And we're obviously seeing it in Ukraine as well, what with no-fly and sanctions and MiGs and war crimes. Come to think of it, this was the Trump years as well, with the constant hunt for One Weird Trick.
*it's a movie trope for the foreign big bad to tell the Americans that they're foolishly optimistic, always hunting for an escape form the unescapable, but since those scripts are written by Americans, I don't think they count as evidence in either direction. I do know that in general foreigners find Americans unaccountably optimistic, but I'm not sure that's directly tied to balancing tradeoffs.
218.1 I had a similar impression.
218.2 And yet not incisive analysis of mid period Ozu or good anime recommendations. I am disappoint.
There were no good options for Syria. I mean sometimes that's the way it is.
181.1 Are the Russians digging in? Anyway that seems a waste to use the Bayraktar to hit them in dug in positions. So far they seem to mostly be hitting Russian AA assets (lots of Buks and the like), MLRS, etc, which is smart.
I thought 214.last was kind of obviously the answer--once Assad survived the initial uprising, the people of Syria were fucked, and no plausible outside intervention could unfuck them. The intrusion of ISIS complicated things, but the basic dynamic of "dictator too strong to be toppled, too weak to end rebellion" is simply intractable.
Indeed, I think that's exactly why Putin chose the strategy he did: if he takes Kyiv in the first (say) 60 hours, Zelensky is dead or fled, and a puppet is put in charge of a shamed, discouraged country, there's really nothing anybody outside can do about it. "Facts on the ground" and all that. But now, even if Zelensky is killed, the concept of a free Ukrainian government is pretty well established, and their armed forces remain in being to receive supplies and keep Putin from achieving his primary aims. It's frankly nothing like Syria.
218.1: That guy's threads are entertaining and informative on at least some points but I'm not sure how much to trust him.
218: on the history and economics content, the bits I'm familiar with are accurate and are state of the art. on the prison thread, he's following Diego Gambetta's brilliant book CODES OF THE UNDERWORLD very closely, and after the last ten days who wouldn't think of IR in terms of trying to avoid being victimized?
I'd also point out that he's a Kazan Tatar himself, and a peripheral, non-Great Russian/Orthodox Russian voice is an interesting one to have.
227 I've seen some really interesting stuff on his TL. But I've also seen quite a bit that gives me pause.
Agree with 224. Two other things to add. Invading another country is a clear violation of the international order in a way that killing your own people is not. See also Iraq invading Kuwait as compared to the civil war in Syria. Also several NATO powers were much more heavily involved in Syria than they are in Ukraine, with the US, Turkey and the UK all actually participating directly in the war.
I've been reading his threads and similarly don't know exactly what to make of him (though they do seem pretty informative about the various individuals in the Russian power structure that are rarely if ever mentioned in western media), but this one caught my attention because my girlfriend--who was once a lobbyist for Big Food prior to living in Mexico for six years--had told me more than once that understanding the Avocado Mafia was pretty important to understanding Mexican government/cartels. So it was odd to see it pop up in this context.
I agree with 224. Further to 214, I would say that assisting in defending a recognized government from outside attack -- one fairly specifically forbidden by an agreement to which we are a party -- is so different from backing a long-shot insurgency, the goals of which, beyond getting rid of a particular tyrant, have little to recommend them, is so completely different that if raised by someone whose good faith I didn't know based on many years of contact, I'd think it was rank whataboutery.
I can write longer sentences, if called upon.
I can write longer sentences, if called upon.
I doubt we can afford your hourly rate.
If Assad's rationale for fighting the insurgency included claims inconsistent with the territorial integrity of our NATO ally Turkey, we might well have been acting differently. Russia's claimed justification for attacking Ukraine is that it's basically Mississippi circa 1863: not a nation with an independent right to territorial integrity.
I guess I'm among those who shrugged in 2014 when Russia occupied Crimea after the Maidan change of government. The legalities were the same. more or less, but the context was very different.
This is the better subject for whataboutery.
Sorry, that was literal whataboutery, but mostly because I've been seeing it on Twitter and realized that I didn't have a solid enough sense of Syria to evaluate it -- that was one of those stories where I never got properly up to speed at all.
Okay, I read the Gambetta/prison code/honor thread all the way to the end and I truly have no idea what the takeaway message is other than "US & NATO fucked this up, but Putin fucked it up worse, so everyone can learn lessons for next time." I mean, Alex, what's your read on this? I honestly can't tell if he's advocating that NATO enter the war or not, or if the point is that it's too late for remedies. The ambiguity makes me question whether the whole thing is worth my time.
My reading would be "give all possible support up to the limit of direct NATO/Russian engagement" but that's not far from actual policy and it's what I agree with in any case.
237 that he's got a good meth dealer. Doesn't mean there isn't some good insight somewhere in there but I knows it when I sees it
Putin is the one who will decide whether whatever NATO does counts as an act of war. Sanctions? Intelligence? Weapons? Providing planes that take off from a NATO base? Cyber attacks? Short of NATO soldiers intentionally killing Russian soldiers any of those have room to argue each way. So if Putin decides something counts or not is entirely based on whether he thinks retaliating against NATO directly is in his interest.
Glad I watched Hunt for Red October so many times. "It would be well for your government to consider that having your ships and ours, your aircraft and ours, in such proximity... is inherently DANGEROUS. Wars have begun that way, Mr. Ambassador."
221: I can't tell to what extent you're responding to my comments, but I'm curious!
I don't know if it's all humans or if current USians are especially bad at it*, but the whole concept of tradeoffs and balancing bad outcomes seems utterly alien and unacceptable. And we're obviously seeing it in Ukraine as well, what with no-fly and sanctions and MiGs and war crimes.
This is both reductive and vague enough that I'm not sure how to evaluate it as a claim. Anyone fighting back against an invading army, rather than capitulating to save innocent lives, is prima facie on board with tradeoffs and balancing bad outcomes. I'm not sure whether to engage the pandemic banned-analogy, but in both cases I think there's been lively debate about what tradeoffs and balances are optimal, rather than an overwhelming trend of pure naive optimism. But I'm sure I'm not telling you anything new there; maybe you still see the naivety and delusion as most salient?
I think my questions about war crimes are likely more technical and procedural than they are veiled calls to suspend a nuclear warhead directly over the Kremlin. No one seems to want to talk technicalities about war crimes, though, which is totally fine. I'm sure it's depressing as shit.
Speaking of meth and the prison code, I'm definitely more in a place where I am devoting effort to not appear weak, mostly in domestic politics. Things like trying to understand the point of view of the other side or what problems might be facing them have kind of gone out the window in the 16th round of threats.
Just remember: that monkey is as scared of you as you are of it.
Most of my attention should be on domestic stuff anyway, meaning both U.S. politics and the damn laundry. So just two more twitter links, usual caveats about non-verification:
- Russia allegedly announced the hospital strike in advance on TV
- Classic fascist stuff at "a shopping mall in Kazan"
The mall thing looks kind of Tiffany-meets-Leni Riefenstahl, but maybe it's better with the sound on.
Yeah, someone should set it to "I Think We're Alone Now" for sure
No one seems to want to talk technicalities about war crimes, though, which is totally fine. I'm sure it's depressing as shit.
The Ukrainians have already referred a bunch of stuff to the Hague, and there will definitely be more. I'm still not sure exactly what you're looking for in your comments here, but the war crimes discourse is definitely a big part of everything that's going on.
I think I'm imagining some "The war crime was invented in 1650 by Steven Warcrime" history of ideas, culminating in an explanation of why I should or should not feel personally responsible for the deaths of innocent people. But you know, sometimes you say a dumb thing and people just free-associate for 100 comments and it's cool?
248: Have you seen this Vox piece? It's really about the larger norm against wars of conquest rather than the concept of war crimes per se, but it does go into a lot of the intellectual history around these questions. No satisfying conclusion regarding personal guilt, though.
Interesting idea here (the rest of the thread is interesting too) that one reason the Russians stumbled so badly is that they've never thought of Ukraine as a "colony" so never developed a discipline of studying it as an exotic society. As a result, they understand the Middle East and China (not actually Russian colonies either, of course) better than they do Ukraine. Not sure I totally buy it but it's interesting.
249: Thanks for that and especially for the Gopal interview, which was great. (A close friend gave me a copy of his Afghanistan book with a high recommendation and I still haven't read it. The rec also basically acknowledged that it would leave me without hope for humanity.)
Honestly, I've typed and discarded a lot of comments, because they keep dissolving into internal arguments and uncertainties over how we think about armed conflict, laws and lawbreaking, and unilateral violence against civilians. As soon as I generate four sentences of bullshit from inside my own skull, it seems incredibly self-indulgent and pointless. So I'm just aimlessly angry.
I am curious about this new bioweapons claim. Like is it something with a kernel of truth that there are labs doing basic biology research and they'll show some incubators and say "bioweapons!" (Aforementioned chemical vendor will also run biological drug discovery experiments for you in Kyiv, including antibiotics testing.) Or is it just going to be completely fabricated like the claim that Ukrainians are actually bombing themselves to make Russia look bad?
Joe Lieberman comes back from the grave to write an OpEd arguing for a no-fly zone.
I knew we were in hell, but wildly misjudged which level we were on.
I don't understand why the glorious Russian peacekeepers have so far been unable to prevent the Ukrainian people from bombing themselves. No doubt that's part of the long-range plan, penciled in later on their rigorously followed schedule.
No one seems to want to talk technicalities about war crimes, though, which is totally fine. I'm sure it's depressing as shit.
I'm glad European institutions are involved because it's hard for the US to take the high ground when it's repeatedly refused to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC and repeatedly failed to hold its own officials accountable for its own crimes. I read Spencer Ackerman's Reign of Terror last year and it's full of people saying "this is a line we shouldn't cross, we will pay for this" followed by various crimes and subversions of democracy, followed by little to no accountability.
252: there's a kernel of truth in that the US DOD really has helped fund microbiological labs in Ukraine, some for COVID surveillance and some for research into other high-risk pathogens. They do so in five other countries in the region, because what they're worried about is the biological weapons that the USSR developed secretly for twenty years after signing a treaty outlawing BW, and the proliferation of the technology and expertise behind them. So a big part of it (though not in the Ukrainian ones specifically) is giving ex-Soviet germ bomb designers a well paid job, so they don't decide to go off to Iran or Iraq or wherever and start designing Jewbola Virus. The rest is decontaminating old Soviet BW sites (again, not so much in Ukraine) and surveillance for dangerous diseases, natural or manmade.
- Russia allegedly announced the hospital strike in advance on TV
They do that. Back in 1999 they announced one of the apartment bombings (in Volgodonsk) in parliament three days before it happened.
As Peter Fleming said, at the end of his epic rant about the trans-Siberian railway: "Why can the Russians never pull anything off?"
This reminds me of one of legend ballet teacher R/enato P/aroni's in-class asides:
"...ah, coordination class. I've seen incredible dancers ruin themselves in coordination classes. People with careers.
.
Like Napoleon in Russia.
.
.
Like the Germans in Russia.
.
.
.
Like the RUSSIANS in Russia."
[I think that was the time he'd disappeared for a while and then suddenly showed up again, and I was fishing for compliments so hard, so I was concentrating really obsessively on the exercise, because coordination, to the point I'd forgotten which side it was on so I was facing the wrong way (on the end of a centre barre, so it's possible to do this without finding yourself staring into someone's face) and I didn't notice until he walked by and just tweaked me round the right way with one hand on my head. yup, no callout for you, but you've got to hand it to him for the bon mot.]
241: I was definitely not aiming at you in particular, or really discussion around here in general. It's more the broader discourse that's filled with people who acknowledge that things are bad, but insist that they'd be basically solved if only [fill in the blank]. Sometimes the blank is "not have expanded NATO 30 years ago", sometimes it's "no-fly zone tomorrow". What unites it all is refusal to engage with things being bad no matter what.
This was also a lot of the discourse around Afghanistan. Once we started bombing in 2001, the only possible "good" outcome would have been capturing Bin Laden and getting the hell out. Once we didn't do that, there was never going to be a good outcome. Biden saw that and got the hell out, ripped off the band-aid. And then you got a million words spilled about how if only, but there was no if only. It was always going to be bad, and while some things could have been done better, it would still have looked/felt/been terrible even if it had been the most perfectly-executed operation in human history.
And I saw very, very few people willing to face that directly (again, not here; I don't even think I was lurking here last summer). Even the ones defending Biden and attacking bad-faith "if only" would still indulge in criticisms as if they mattered more than marginally.
Thanks for replying -- I certainly agree that an amorphous pressure to think, talk, write, etc. this way exists out in the world. It's hard to contest.
255: I thought Ackerman's latest piece about no-fly zones was actually cathartic to read.
I HAVE WRITTEN too many why-a-no-fly-zone-is-a-bad-idea pieces to have the energy to do it again here. Here's the crude, exhausted-reporter version.
It is one thing, as a matter of tactical proficiency, to ground a weak air force. Against Russia, you unavoidably court World War III. Imagine being one of those young F-16 pilots who will have to make split-second decisions between superpower conflict and watching civilians below you die. Do you fire when you see the Russian jet launch a missile on targets below? When it fires on you? What happens when it just flies close to you? What happens when several Russian warplanes in your airspace close formation? And so on, during every single combat air patrol (CAP), CAPs that you will have to keep in the skies relentlessly, from airfields of NATO countries, for as long as the No-Fly Zone lasts.
...
All that feels like a preview of the escalatory pressures to come. Not only from Zelenskyy, or from NATO allies, but at home. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a frivolous person who thinks he's a substantial person, said on Tuesday that Biden should accept the MiGs from Poland and give them to Ukraine, which "doesn't have time for paperwork." This is the path to the sky getting bright at 10:30 p.m.
I still feel like it's objectively silly that supplying weapons that kill Russians on the ground (guns, antitank weapons) is fine, but killing them from the sky is Right Out. But of course in considering escalation you have to consider how the other side views the action, even if that view is irrational.
That should be, supplying weapons that kill them from the sky - transferring the MiGs, not creating a no-fly-zone.
Starting to see pics and videos of captured/destroyed T-72As which is very old kit indeed
I think the Starstreaks will prove a lot more useful than more MiGs (which have been upgraded to be NATO compatible so I doubt Ukrainian pilots could even operate them without a few months training)
265: but then again armies do go to war with old kit. The Coalition in 1991 had plenty of stuff from the 70s and 60s.
This is the path to the sky getting bright at 10:30 p.m.Like, moving to Canada?
I've read that the Polish jets have Nato avionics that shouldn't fall into Russian hands. I don't know how long it would take to replace them or if there's a faster alternative to getting planes , wouldn't expect the discussion to be conducted publicly.
Russian coworkers tell me that everyone who can is fleeing to Finland, Armenia, or Istanbul. June will bring China buying Russian oil with food.
263: I saw a surprisingly thoughtful take which was that every form of opposition, from sanctions to cyber warfare to supplying intel to supplying weapons (of whatever type), can be treated as causus belli if the other side chooses to. That is, the entire spectrum between firmly-worded diplomatic communiques and boots on the ground is defined by how the other side is willing to respond. There are norms, of course, but A. Putin is quite proudly a flouter of norms, and B. norms only hold as long as all parties see them in their interest. If Putin feels threatened enough, he can escalate in response to anything he damn well chooses, and there's nothing we can actually do about it.
None of which is to say that we should escalate or ourselves push any particular norm--if it's widely accepted that shipping weapons is OK but flying a weapon in is not, and we think Putin sees it that way too, then we work within that constraint. But there's no referee, no whistle. If Putin decided to nuke London over the sanction regime, he doesn't get a special penalty because everybody agreed the UK hadn't done anything over the line.
270: indeed. Supplying aircraft to someone a superpower is st war with doesn't automatically lead to nuclear war. Look at Vietnam!
I gotta say, the phrase "NATO MiGs" would have spun the brain of mid-1980s me.
Anyway, I wonder if the shortage in Ukraine is of planes or of pilots. I also wonder about interoperability in the very short term. The people who would seem best placed to know appear to be coming down on opposite sides of those questions.
This is an interesting account of how the MiG debacle went down inside the US government. Seems like various other parties, especially Borrell and the Poles, got out a little too far ahead of what the administration was comfortable with at certain key points.
I'm comfortable saying that if Sasse supports something, it's probably wrong.
Seems like a clear case of people not wanting to actually get the deal done but wanting the blame to be on someone else.
Imagine being one of those young F-16 pilots who will have to make split-second decisions between superpower conflict and watching civilians below you die. Do you fire when you see the Russian jet launch a missile on targets below? When it fires on you? What happens when it just flies close to you? What happens when several Russian warplanes in your airspace close formation? And so on, during every single combat air patrol
Fucking magnets rules of engagement, how do they work?
Sure, air combat operations are highly stressful, but I feel that shouldn't be news to anyone here in 2022.
(And you know Ackerman's getting old when he starts talking about "young F-16 pilots". These guys are captains and majors in their mid-thirties, they're not Geoffrey Wellum fresh out of school.)
I thought the issue was that, as stressful as air combat generally might be, it's substantially more so when it's got a good chance of setting off World War III. Balancing the laws of war against your personal safety and other peoples lives his hard, but when individual errors can, at worst, get you and maybe a couple of hundred other people killed, that's just what combat is like. When you up the stakes to hundreds of millions or billions, that's qualitatively different.
Yeah, I don't care how well-trained and in their mid-30s the pilots are, I don't want one pilot's error (and errors are made in war all the time!) starting nuclear war.
I am really not sure how people see the escalation path going here from "Russian aircraft shot down" to "global nuclear war".
If you mean in addition to the escalation to nuclear war path we're already on, I think I agree. Because the risk seems real. Russia is obviously unable to control Ukraine and it's too late to undo the damage done to their economy and reputation. Nuclear escalation might start to look like an out.
Once you have representatives of two nuclear powers actively shooting at each other, I'd think it would be something to worry about, but I'm far from being an expert. But in any case, whether Ackerman was an idiot to worry that a no-fly zone could lead to nuclear escalation, it's clear that it is in fact what he was worrying about, at which point what he was saying about stress on the pilots makes sense.
I worry that Russia is looking for a pretext to use a tactical nuke as a way to terrorize their way into taking enough territory to count it as a win. But I'm not sure that trying to avoid giving them a pretext will matter as to whether or not Russia finds one.
Seems to me there is a clear distinction between an American pilot shooting from an American plane vs. a Ukrainian and a Ukrainian plane, no?
And yeah, then you get into the murky quesetion of "What is a Ukrainian plane?" But the bottom line is: You cross a really important line once Americans start shooting at Russians.
(Am I responding to the argument being made here? I'm a little confused about whether we're talking about the Polish MiG scheme or no-fly zones. The former seems very dicey, the latter seems nuts.)
I take gswift's point about rules of engagement, but I think Mike Tyson's point about a punch in the mouth is more salient here.
282 It's not shooting down a single plane, it's the rout of Russian forces that follows from NATO air superiority. Russia has committed a significant portion of its military might to this thing, and it's already having greater difficulty than expected. (Although maybe they can still surround and get the surrender of militarily significant groups of the Ukrainian army?) Direct US involvement completely changes the calculus, and puts regime change in Russia specifically on the table in a way that it is not now. Putin and his leadership group could reasonably view direct US involvement as existential.
Well, there are various different arguments here. One is "If a NATO plane shoots down a Russian plane over Ukraine, that automatically means Russia is at war with NATO and that will go nuclear" - I don't think that's plausible.
And then there's another which is "if NATO provides a neutral sky for Ukraine to fight under, then Ukraine will defeat Russia, and if Russia looks like it's going to lose then it will use nuclear weapons". The thing here is that the second part could follow all sorts of things. Ukraine could conceivably win without air cover, just by outfighting Russia on the ground, and in that case, under this theory, Russia would also use nuclear weapons - and, presumably against Ukraine. I can't honestly see a reason why Russia, facing defeat in Ukraine, would use nukes against anyone but Ukraine - everyone else is under the NATO umbrella, Ukraine is the target least likely to provoke a nuclear response. The UK might or might not go nuclear over Warsaw, but it's surely less likely to go nuclear over Kyiv.
Similarly, to 287, I don't see why "Ukrainian victory with NATO air support" puts regime change on the table in a way that "Ukrainian victory with NATO-supplied missiles" doesn't. If Putin's generals decide he needs the Tsar Paul treatment, it'll be because he lost in Ukraine, not because of any particular aspect of that defeat. If anything, the rally-round effect of a war (albeit a lost one) against the glavny vrag might make Putin rather more secure than just losing a war to the despised Ukrainians.
Putin and co surely don't envision, in any scenario, NATO marching on Moscow to overthrow him. Do they?
285. Once/if Russia disconnects deeply enough from the internet, at least financial institutions, widespread internet disruption will be an alternative weapon for them. Alternately, shooting down more commercial airliners. Basically, there is a lot that a diminshed and pouting Russia can do short of using nuclear weapons.
Also, sober and informative report that Putin is now going after senior FSB; that's really going to affect RU ability to think ahead. https://twitter.com/AndreiSoldatov/status/1502221544499601411?s=20&t=v9NRb0mhkhm0tDarmo2HfQ
287: That's why a no-fly zone is nuts, but it's nothing to do with individual pilots or rules of engagement.
Although, TBH, I'm not sure that a rout of ground forces follows from a no-fly zone. The Russian AF has been ineffective enough that it's reducing Ukrainian AF effectiveness at the margins, not entirely. IOW, if the Ukrainians had complete air superiority, I think they're doing 50% more damage, not 500%. And the ground forces aren't large enough to overwhelm invasion forces, air support or no.
290.1: Work is already upping network security.
It's probably a greater risk in q no-fly situation that a US plane getting shot down leads to US escalation.
288: OK, that clarifies the issues for me.
There has been some loose talk in this thread about how a war between NATO and Russia is inevitably nuclear. I agree with you that in a literal sense, this is incorrect. You have pointed out that the existing situation also creates nuclear risks (although you limit them to Ukraine). I think that's correct, except for the limitation.
In the interest of literalness and precision: A NATO war against Russia escalates nuclear risk unacceptably, and must be avoided.
q no-fly situation
For those not keeping up with these things, "Q no-fly situation" is where Actual President Donald Trump orders the Air Force to shoot down the planes of Democratic pedophiles.
"if NATO provides a neutral sky for Ukraine to fight under,"
It's that providing a neutral sky involves attacking Russian anti-aircraft weapons on Russian territory. It also involves attacking Russian radars in Russia in a way that's not readily distinguishable from what NATO would do if it were preparing an invasion or a nuclear first strike.
291.2 sounds sensible - the Ukrainians just don't have enough CAS to make a difference even if they owned the skies uncontested. But I don't agree with this: "And the ground forces aren't large enough to overwhelm invasion forces, air support or no" - the Ukrainian active ground forces may already outnumber Russian troops in Ukraine (if not, they aren't far off), and it isn't immediately obvious that Russian troops are on average of higher quality (though they have more artillery and armour).
290.last Getting big James Jesus Angleton vibes here.
You have pointed out that the existing situation also creates nuclear risks (although you limit them to Ukraine).
I wouldn't say they were limited to Ukraine - just that they're bigger there than anywhere else. If Putin decides to nuke somewhere, either for tactical advantage to help him win the war, or as a terror tactic to demoralise the Ukrainians and make them surrender, he is most likely to nuke Ukraine - that's the area where he wants to have whatever effect he wants to have, and it also isn't under a nuclear umbrella. I can't see a scenario where he's losing in Ukraine, decides to go nuclear, and nukes Warsaw first.
296 came here to say the same (and I think I did above or in the earlier thread). It's nuts.
297.last they appear quite poorer if the videos I've been seeing on twitter are any indication. Squad or two retreating down a road under what appears to be enfilade fire and they don't disperse or go to cover in the woods on either side of the road. That column of armor that was all bunched up as it got struck by artillery fire and UA ground fires.
Lower case q is completely different from upper case but I'm not at liberty to reveal the difference.
I can't see a scenario where he's losing in Ukraine, decides to go nuclear, and nukes Warsaw first.
These false binaries are going to be a problem if we insist (as you have) on literalism. There are chains of actions that have consequences. And in fact, I think you are acknowledging that in the current situation, there is a chain of potential actions that plausibly could result in a nuclear strike on Warsaw eventually.
Bombing Russian radar sites would (in my non-expert guess) have a chance of touching off nuclear war that is less than 50/50. The nuclear risk, by itself, would still make that insane.
The escalation to Poland I'm worried more about is if Russia decides to connected up Kaliningrad to Belarus. It's just the sort of grey zone that's on the one hand an invasion of NATO countries (even if they stay on the Lithuanian side of the border), while being limited enough that you can imagine Putin doing it once there's direct NATO involvement in Ukraine. And then the nuclear NATO powers have to decide whether the use nukes to defend NATO territory or not.
296: a no-fly zone need involve neither of these things, though, and the idea that knocking out Russian radars in southern Russia would look like preparation for a nuclear first strike is rather difficult to follow. I can't think of a reasonable first strike plan that would involve doing SEAD in south-west Russia. It's not on the way to anywhere.
So apparently breaking news, Belarusian forces about to invade Ukraine: https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1502331094502457344
Is it weird that even the Nazis managed more plausible false flag operations?
||
Also, I'm sorry but I got distracted by this stupid tweet embedding an even stupider one. Source of the image is supposedly this book, which seems fairly dry. I think, based on searching for "France" inside the Google preview, that it's just a reference to U.S. supporting anti-Communist parties in European elections? Why are people idiots?
|>
Interesting thread linked by Anders Ostlund:
https://twitter.com/holger_r/status/1502269876999757831
the Ukrainian active ground forces may already outnumber Russian troops in Ukraine (if not, they aren't far off)
Oh, I had no idea. I must say, it raises the odds in my mind of Putin doing something a little extra, so to speak. If outright defeat on the ground is possible (as opposed to grinding stalemate), then he's going to be thinking about options that shift the situation dramatically.
On a related note, an attacker wants a 3:1 ratio against a prepared* defender, but what's the deal with counter-attack? Is 1:1 enough to give it a shot if you think the enemy is demoralized, sunder-supplied, etc? I don't mean if you think he's ready to turn and run, just that he's at low effectiveness and overextended.
*not nec. dug-in, but not an ambush, either.
And then the nuclear NATO powers have to decide whether the use nukes to defend NATO territory or not.
TBH, given what we've seen, I think the age-old assumption that nukes are the only way for Europe to defend against overwhelming numbers of Russian tanks has to be considered dubious at best. Whatever excuses/caveats you want to make for what's happened in Ukraine, it's just really clear that the Russian military is not capable of the kind of rapid advance that we think of as modern, first world warfare.
To be super-clear, this is not me saying they're a paper tiger and we shouldn't worry about them doing bad things. Jaw-jaw vs war-war and all that. But it's really far from given that, if Russia tries for Kaliningrad, they can get it, let alone hold it. Aside from on-the-ground effectiveness, we now know that they wouldn't be able to do such a thing without the US knowing before half the soldiers do.
312.2: that ratio rally only holds up to a certain point. If you're attacking a platoon you need a company. But if you're invading a country with an army of 100,000, it doesn't follow that you need to have 300,000.
314: Oh sure, I was more curious about the latter point. If the Ukrainian army and Russian forces in Ukraine are equal in size and not totally unequal in equipment, can Ukraine successfully counter-attack, or do they need more advantage?
Strong recommendation that we armchair strategists read ACOUP's latest post: Nuclear Deterrence 101
He (Bret Devereaux) gives a great summary of the history of nuclear deterrence plus how you can try to cheat around it. As usual fascinating reading. (I studied all this stuff back when I was a lad but time has passed and it was a great refresher.)
On the NFZ point, I think the line everyone is worried about is actual, for-real combat between NATO and Russian forces happening. It certainly would, by definition, mean NATO fighters shooting at Russians. It would probably mean NATO defence suppression against Russian SAMs in Ukraine, and might mean NATO defence suppression against long-range Russian SAMs outside Ukraine (i.e. in Russia) depending on whether the Russians use them.
One big problem is that the Russians, in that situation, might have a go at high value, fairly vulnerable NATO aircraft like E-3s and RC-135s operating over Poland, which would be another big step towards war and even if it didn't make it in itself, would involve the Polish air force, the RAF and others who are deployed to the Baltics and Romania, and at this point how are you not having a NATO/Russia air war.
There were quite a lot of air-to-air incidents in the early Cold War (and a couple much later) that ended up with planes shot out of the sky, including passenger airliners, without escalation but it probably helped that the Soviet Union was not invading, say, Yugoslavia at the time.
It gets worse for a hostile military occupation. You'd need a minimum of 5 troops per 1,000 inhabitants but even that doesn't guarantee success. Realistically you'd need 10 or even 20 per 1,000. How the Russians ever thought they'd be able to pull this off is beyond me. They really must have thought they'd be greeted as liberators.
The other thing is that in the early cold war it was much easier to hide things from the public and just ignore public opinion. Nowadays public opinion is going to push really hard for further escalation (which we're already seeing with the NFZ thing).
The 3:1 ratio: the point is to have an advantage at the place and time of the attack. The question with regard to the Ukrainians is at what scale they can get such an advantage - just pushes here or there, or trying to isolate a Russian grouping that is too far ahead of the rest, or trying to crack one of the major Russian formations.
Yeah. I played enough Avalon Hill games to know that the 3:1 ratio is about local superiority.
This is good https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/just-how-tall-are-russian-soldiers
And this but really stood out: "The sequencing of units moving on ground lines of communication made no tactical sense with riot police pushed in front of fighting formations."
IANAExpert on Russia, but 270 strikes me as smart. There's a list of what is commonly thought of as escalation/starting a war, and there's not really a good reason why except 'everyone's agreed this doesn't count as NATO warring' so we can tank their economy and send them tanks but not fly in planes. Until someone doesn't. Is there a way to get the planes across the border without flying them? I feel like Amazon Prime probably has a van for that.
Would it be reasonable to assume that at this point the good guys have pretty good estimates of the rates of attrition and resupply for most of the map?
Which character in MASH sent an entire jeep home by mailing it one part at a time?
I think somehow the free speech discussion led me to this interview with a Korean-Ukrainian currently in Taiwan. Super interesting history and seems like a cool guy. I hope his family stays safe, and that Taiwan stays safe.
Lurkers in a 330-comment war thread with bonus Taiwan content? Unpossible.
Lurkers are most welcome to comment anytime
289 I don't think anyone knows what happens if a tactical nuke gambit by Russia is tried and fails. Or if a chemical weapons gambit is tried. Neither comes about, it seems to me (and of course I absolutely do not know shit about anything here) unless the Russian Army is on the verge of a catastrophic defeat. Russia has put a whole lot of chips on the table, and to continue the metaphor, it appears to have two pair, and not the full house it was hoping for.
Not sure that the Russian army will face a catastrophic defeat rather than just deflate slowly, more or less in the direction of Crimea / eastern Ukraine. But either way, not entirely sure that Putin there would know about it: there seems to be some serious knowledge deficits at the top leadership level. 'Declare victory, go home' seems to be the best possible off ramp here.
Also, Putin now looks to be very busy with things back home, and with Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc. etc.
It seems like the Russians are committed to giving the full Grozny/Aleppo treatment to Mariupol, Kharkiv, and any other city they can reach but not conquer. It's not yet clear how many cities that is, though.
The scale of the completely senseless human tragedy of this war is hard to grapple with. Thousands of people dead, millions displaced, whole cities destroyed, and all for absolutely nothing.
Russia can't possibly "win" in the sense of achieving its political objectives at this point, and the best it can hope for is a Pyrrhic victory where they take control of some big chunk of Ukraine and install a puppet regime that will face a fierce insurgency that will eventually kick them out. And even that's looking less likely every day. They might just lose! But then they're backed into a corner, and they have enough destructive power in reserve that the prospect of taking wild risks out of desperation is as plausible as it is terrifying.
Kharkiv, which was one of the most pro-Russian cities in Ukraine.
Right? It's like twenty miles from the border. Which also makes it easy to bomb the fuck out of from a logistical perspective, which seems to be the governing factor.
It even feels weird to call it "Kharkiv" rather than "Kharkov," though of course I get why we're doing that. Chrome's spellcheck is giving red underline to the former but not the latter in this very comment.
Bennett told Zelensky to surrender. US needs some new allies in the Middle East because all these guys suck (and have sucked for a long time but this is a new level of suck)
Vis a vis realpolitik, Bennett is worried about Israel's hostile neighbors (Iran, Syria, etc.) and correctly thinks the US isn't paying much attention to them. Same thing is happening as regards the threat to Taiwan. I suspect that Taiwan and US allies in the region would appreciate some attention paid. Of course, China is getting a valuable lesson in how not to conquer a pesky neighbor.
323: The reddest of red lines for NATO is about the territory of any NATO member. So, in principle Russia could use tactical nukes in Ukraine without crossing that line. It's part of the "salami slice" scenario ACOUP discusses, btw. (The link in 316 has a link to a classic and highly relevant "Yes, Prime Minister" episode, for extra added goodness.)
Huh, I hadn't seen that the Kyiv Independent (which is... just a Twitter account?) has both sides denying the surrender report. They also report that Zelensky is now asking Bennett to mediate talks with Putin in Jerusalem. Whatever the accuracy of these reports, I'm confident that Bennett is in way over his head.
What should Zelensky ask for in a Russian surrender?
Now's never been a better time for rapprochement with Iran. Re-enter the JCPOA get the oil flowing to offset the economic shock caused by Russia's invasion and fuck the KSA. Fuck the UAE. And fuck Israel.
329: Wow. That is a fascinating interview, a fascinating history and a fascinating kid.
Huh, I hadn't seen that the Kyiv Independent (which is... just a Twitter account?)
From the Kyiv Independent:
Russia concentrates military power for Kyiv assault
https://kyivindependent.com/national/russia-concentrates-military-power-for-kyiv-assault/
Something makes me think Kyiv is ready for them.
Kyiv Independent seems to be a bunch of former Kyiv Post staffers and they look very young. Or I am very old.
329: Truly an amazing interview.
347 / 349.last -- that is a fascinating interview.
334 For the last years of our military involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan, our main missions were (a) force protection and (b) try to find a way to get out without being seen to have been driven out. It took a really long time for (b), and we ultimately failed in both places. (Vietnam too, I guess). It may be that the Russian leadership still thinks they can accomplish something of national value here, and they're not quite ready for the search for an off ramp. And maybe they'll somehow yet get lucky with a series of decapitation strikes, and a new Ukrainian leadership willing to accept formalization of the status quo ante in return for an exit.
Declaring victory and leaving is only viable where everyone, including the enemy, believes it.
That's what OAN and Tucker are for.
The Wikipedia entry on Soviet Korean displacement is interesting background reading: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Koreans_in_the_Soviet_Union
I don't know about Koreans specifically, but the average human displaces about 62 liters.
Turns out there is more in the weapons locker than I realised: https://www.edrmagazine.eu/switchblade-600-the-new-medium-range-loitering-munition. These seem non-escalatory and also effective.
Loitering munitions seem scary AF to me.
In a sense, Voltron was a loitering munition.
Well, shit just got interesting again.
Are the Ukrainians going to form Blazing Sword?
358?
https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1502799196558184455
Missiles hit Erbil:
https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1502804135627960329
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-701103
WTAF?
What I'm seeing, trying to find information on Twitter, is that it might have been retaliation for an Israeli attack, and that US response is likely to be limited.
Seems weird to retaliate against the US instead of Israel then... Also seeing suggestions that they did something very similar after we assassinated Soleimani, and it mostly didn't escalate then (except for Iran getting trigger-happy and shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet full of Iranians).
No Americans killed in the attack which might(?) have been intentional.
Apparently no one was hurt but it does seem weird.
Official response? https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1503067112641863685
Presumably the Russians paid someone in Iran so Tucker would have something to "what about" on tonight's show.
367: Scroll down a while in the linked thread and you get this: Possible Outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and China's Choice
It's written by a Chinese pundit and it is fascinating. Hu Wei is "vice-chairman of the Public Policy Research Center of the Counselor's Office of the State Council, the chairman of Shanghai Public Policy Research Association, the chairman of the Academic Committee of the Chahar Institute, a professor, and a doctoral supervisor."
The tl;dr version of his recommendation about the Putin war is: China should not help Russia but in fact try to get them to come to their senses. (But the whole thing is worth reading.)
I think you're underselling your summary.
I didn't want to get anyone too excited.
Wow, scrolling down the "Ukraine" list timeline on Twitter is grim as fuck today. I saw a vaguely familiar name boosted by the Kyiv Post and had to remind myself what I'd read about him.
I don't know, I'm starting to feel... pessimistic?
I don't know exactly what has changed, other than more (extremely) bad things happening and good things failing to happen. The dread is somehow different after this past week.
I don't know, man, I think the bad things that have happened this past week are well within the range of bad things I was expecting three weeks ago and overall on the less bad side of that range. I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, exactly; I still think things are going to get worse before they get better, but it really hasn't been as bad as I'd feared it would be by this point. Still early, of course.
The link upthread got me to look up what happened to a friend from history grad school who was considering studying Koreans in the Soviet Union as a dissertation topic. I'm not sure what the dissertation ended up being, as I dropped out and lost touch, but my friend did end up studying ethnicity and culture in the Soviet Union and must have gotten tenure about 5-7 years ago, based on their current position and publication history.
Looking up friends from humanities grad school is always a reminder of how long academic advancement can take on the faculty tenure track. In between when I dropped out and when my friend's first book was published, I'd dropped out of grad school, took a short-term job in journalism, another short-term job at a nonprofit, got two (related) masters degrees in a new career field, gotten a job in that field, then gotten another job in that field.
372: really? I was feeling more optimistic. Supplies still getting through, Russia looking increasingly desperate, still no siege of or serious assault on Kyiv, Ukrainian air defences performing well, and that extraordinary announcement (cum grano salis obviously) that 15 BTGs have now been destroyed and another 18 rendered ineffective (out of an estimated 120 in the country).
I think it may be that there haven't been many really dramatic events for a week or so, the front has become static in as much as there is a defined front, and as a result people are filling the gap with speculation and reheating the same news (how many times has the Guardian announced the assault on Kyiv now?)
It's believable, notes this article, that Russia is taking three times as many losses as Ukraine. Attackers generally do. https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikrammittal/2022/03/10/military-equipment-losses-provide-insight-into-russia-ukraine-war/?sh=80b50216f59b
Further to 312, this explains the 3 to 1 rule. If you say that a unit becomes combat ineffective after, say, 25% loss of combat power, and the object of the battle is to attrit the other side to that point before he does it to you, then naturally you need to start with three times as many troops if you're the attacker, because you're taking three times the losses.
Why this doesn't always apply is that this is a model for a war of attrition - throw your guys at their guys and see who runs out first. It doesn't allow for the possibility that you can render large chunks of the enemy ineffective by other means than attrition - by cutting off their supply lines, or by outmanoeuvering them so they're in the wrong place. So it's possible to have a successful attack with less than a 3:1 ratio, if you're clever and manoeuverist about it. (Or indeed to have a successful defence against an attacker more than three times your size.) But the further you are from the right side of that 3:1 ratio, the cleverer you have to be.
Maybe brining up the day he died isn't friendly?
SPOILERS for anyone still awaiting the result of the Battle of Thermopylae.
I was thinking he probably won a few battles before the one everyone remembers.
379: "Why this doesn't always apply is that this is a model for a war of attrition - throw your guys at their guys and see who runs out first. "
I keep reading that Russia's military effort has about 10 days before it collapses and Kyiv has at least 2 weeks of food left . . .
Today's Pentagon briefing is not entirely discouraging:
https://twitter.com/JackDetsch
Argument that Russian military aid is bad for business in China. Possible.
382: who sent me this jar of 300 horrifying pickles?
You'll be grateful when the drones come.
Providing arms to Russia right now is just bad marketing. You don't want the internet filled with photos of your APC blown up on the side of the road. Looks like bad equipment even if you know it was blown up because Ivan Fuckovv didn't fill the fuel tank.
Here's the Ukraine Railways situation map for today: https://scontent-lcy1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/275529966_5275052122528533_7757057505075683739_n.jpg?stp=cp0_dst-jpg_e15_fr_q65&_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=110474&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_ohc=fMtYo7EdpCkAX9FOgBq&_nc_ht=scontent-lcy1-1.xx&oh=00_AT8BRcQZ-pYfM7MEkbeAXLkIDB2SVEDebYbEM9BOdpqzcQ&oe=62348CF8
As usual, it shows all the routes to and from Kyiv open. This is odd as the one going north-west runs right through the front line in Irpin, but perhaps they mean that the trains are running but re-routed? Really interestingly it also shows an open rail route into the "pocket" to the NE of Kyiv, which...might not be a pocket as such if the railways' information is good? (And not only would they know which stations they can send trains to, it's not obvious what motive they would have to lie about it.)
SPARTANS! EAT A HEARTY BREAKFAST, FOR TONIGHT WE BRINE IN DILL!
GLORY TO NEWER UKRAINE THREAD after 9 days!!!!
Today's highlight beyond the Channel 1 stunt has got to be Russia asking China for MREs. (If it's not real, for purposes of this comment I don't care.) The question is whether they're running low on food, amphetamines, or both.
The Channel 1 stunt was spectacular. It's really remarkable how much resistance this war is getting within Russia even in the face of intense repression.
Wait. Chinese MREs have amphetamines?
I don't even like decongestants, but still that would have been good to know.
You might need a favor from someone who wants amphetamines and not want to have to sign the book at the pharmacist.
It's Meth, Roast beef, and... Eels? (Actually that might be the Jordan Peterson diet.)
On a more sober note, any thoughts on this analysis? It takes a rather dark (but not lurid) turn at the end.
". . . firepower-centric, resulting in mass destruction and deaths of Ukrainian civilians"
I think it is already happening, especially in Mariupol:
https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1503520625784238085
Also Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv along the eastern border. In some other places, especially in the south, there seems to be an uneasy accommodation between occupying forces and the citizens. If you look at Kherson, they have been occupied for days, but there are still massive daily protests:
https://twitter.com/MaximEristavi/status/1503039088307449865
I don't know about the calculation for when the U.S. should get directly involved, but the rest seems likely to me.
Based on Chechnya, and Putin's general lack of regard for human life, it always seemed to me that Russia was going to adopt increasingly destructive tactics the longer a war went on. I didn't anticipate how much pressure there would be for NATO intervention. Even without nukes it would be a difficult call.
Russia has apparently constrained itself by making this officially a special military operation and not a war. If they've mobilized all the troops they've allocated for the special operation that doesn't mean they've mobilized everyone they could recruit or conscript under an unambiguous declaration of war. The suggestions to send in NATO troops need to be analyzed the way Russia should have analyzed the initial invasion. Is it going to be a special military intervention? What if Russia doesn't withdraw quickly? What if the theater expands instead?
399 Yeah, apparently his tweet #14 is not true the Russian advances in the north, east and south are grinding to a standstill. Russia is slowly making gains in the north and east and even more in the south. They appear to (slowly) be learning from their mistakes of the first two weeks. I'd recommend listening to the War on the Rocks podcast interview with Michael Kofman who seems to be much more careful (and more knowledgeable) https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/into-the-third-week-will-russian-forces-need-to-pause/
His twitter feed which I recommended up thread (or on the previous Ukraine post) is also excellent.
Yeah, Kofman's twitter feed is excellent, as is his Chotiner interview. I'm very dubious about the end of the thread in 399. A "forever war on NATO's doorstep" isn't actually a threat to NATO per se and NATO doesn't have to do anything about it. NATO and the US have been very responsible so far in trying to minimize the risk of escalation and I think that'll continue. The actual decisionmakers know the stakes better than all these random commentators.
That Russia has yet to even really try to take Odessa I'm putting down to the fact that they no longer have any Lun-class ekranoplans in service.
403: they have not made any progress in the south for days.
399: I would partly agree but I'd also argue that plans B and C are also consistent with the absence of a plan. B could well be "the strategy to take Kyiv has broken down, those local commanders with the resources to do so keep pushing where they see opportunities, without a clear main effort" and C could well be "we're out of ideas. if you've got rockets left you might as well fire them at whatever target you think fit."
Here's a good BBC interview with the Ukrainian commander of the Kyiv front: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-6074549
Ilia Ponomarenko reckons the Russian artillery facing him is limited by its ability to get resupplied: https://mobile.twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1503686150870949890
This is the issue in ajay's 115 - you can only go FWOOSH (well, whizzzBANG) as often as a truckload of FWOOSH turns up.
406: Ekranoplans would at least skim over the mines.
I made you all a new home to chat in, on the front page.
