>Russia has failed to achieve most of its objectives in Ukraine because.... .
The opening comment makes its seem like this is now all in the past. I think its a bit early to comment on how much Russia achieves here - this is very much WIP with a lot dependent on the solidarity in the West and the reaction of the populations to the cost of the war and the war effort as it drags on.
It's fair to say though that Russia bungled the start and miscalculated the cost benefit of this war.
>>Russia has failed to achieve most of its objectives in Ukraine because...
>The opening comment makes its seem like this is now all in the past. I think its a bit early to comment on how much Russia achieves here - this is very much WIP with a lot dependent on the solidarity in the West and the reaction of the populations to the cost of the war and the war effort as it drags on.
Essentially, the manner in which Russia will have to prosecute to the military side of the war to 'win' their military objectives, will make the political objectives that were the reason for the war in the first place, unachievable.
In the first few days of the war it was possible to imagine Russia achieving those political objectives. Ukraine might have given up the capital immediately. Huge parts of the country might have decided they preferred to join Russia. Europe might have decided not to respond. But it soon became apparent that those assumptions were wildly off. Any victory now will, at best, include absolutely massive quantities of troops perpetually kept in Ukraine at an incredible cost of resources and lives over future years.
> Any victory now will, at best, include absolutely massive quantities of troops perpetually kept in Ukraine at an incredible cost of resources and lives over future years.
They want the land, not the ukrainian people. Putin will gladly send them to Siberia.
Russia population is declining. That's why they kidnap Ukrainian children by hundreds thousands. They also mobilize all men in occupied territories. Virtually all men in DNR/LNR are mobilized and sent as a 2d class cannon fodder in front of russian forces. Same seems to be in plans in occupied Herson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Adding 40mill Ukrainians to "russia" and then use them to attack other countries is the name of the game.
"Russia's Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova: More than 190,000 children had arrived in Russia from Donbass by early May, including about 1,200 coming from orphanages in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics."
Russians themselves are bragging about kidnapping 190K children.
This is the same case as with many others in this war: people are confused because they don't realize a large part of Ukraine has been inhabited by Russians for generations. They really feel like Russians, speaking only in Russian, and until recently there was no problem with that.
Now, after the war broke out, many of these people needed to pick up sides. Are they with those who shoot at them from the East, that were supposed to be their own, or with those from the West, who are shooting their own? Many of them just didn't want to make this choice. Some decided to collaborate with the invaders, which is common in the eastern areas. Some decided they want to have nothing to do with the aggressors and are now starting to learn Ukrainian. I know people from each of these groups personally and it never occurred me to judge their choices.
Now, external observers tend to simplify everything into black-and-white game. I understand it's easier for the media to portray it like this, but it's inaccurate and basically untrue.
So you can only be refugee if you agree to your war propaganda narrative, right? Run in the right direction - refugee, run in the wrong direction - kidnapping victim.
"children will be made to take Russian language classes" is the funniest piece of FUD considering Mariupol is predominantly Russian-speaking city. No support for "forced" relocation claims provided.
A "genuine humanitarian mission", called genocide. They already count kidnapped children that still have parents in Ukraine as orphans, mainly since Russians are planning to make them that.
A drawn out conflict favors Russia, even though they surely preferred to solve this with a decapitating strike within a week. Ukraine’s economy has collapsed, Russia’s economy has suffered but not as much, the sanctions on oil actually will likely result in higher profits. Last time I checked Russia had a 10/1 advantage in heavy artillery, has not mobilized its army but is fighting with 1/5 of its available peacetime forces, whereas Ukraine is fully mobilized and has suffered massive casualties among its most capable forces.
What I'm about to say maybe be totally shocking, but it's the truth. A few people have started to notice it, and it will be more apparent as time goes on, and there will be no reversal from this trajectory.
We are witnessing the total implosion of the Russian military force. The causes will be analyzed for decades (was it corruption? was it misguided doctrine?).
What's the basis for my claim? Some of the Russian (DNR and LDR, included) forces that are fighting currently (you can say conscripts or whatever, but they are troops in Uniform) are showing up with zero training. Zero.
Think about why that might be happening to the 2nd largest military in the world, that's not generally mobilized, fighting a small country in a "special operation".
This is disingenuous considering the entire Western World is helping Ukraine with weapons, intel, billions worth of aid, sanctions on Russia etc. Russia is fighting a war in Ukraine, but it's not just against Ukraine. In their view, they are fighting a war against the West in Ukraine.
US Lend Lease to Ukraine was what, $30B? And that money hasn't been even tapped yet. I don't know the current numbers today, but I'm thinking at least $5B has gone to Ukraine in arms, just from the United States. Ukraine's pre-war military budget seems to be about $6B. US is basically subsidizing UKR defense spending for the next 5 years.
Given the US defense budget is ~$1T, spending < 10% to drastically depleting the Russian military (without even using US forces) is an opportunity that will not be squandered.
Russia can complain all they want, but the truth is they can stop this war immediately by withdrawing. It's a war of choice that they can no longer withdraw from.
I think you have a point. On paper, they had lots of equipment, materiel (and I guess training too) but corrupt officials diverted the monies that were supposed to go for equipment and training and diverted them to their own interest. Moreover, given Putin's coy approach where he tried to pretend they were exercises and not actual war, gave these corrupt officials no time to try and scrounge up some of their ill-spent monies and prepare their military for actual conflict.
That said, I don't think the PLA is as corrupt and if they decide to have some exercises across the straits, they will probably be better prepared and equipped. so we had better have some contingencies for a second theater.
> so we had better have some contingencies for a second theater.
USA doesn't have a first theater yet--no troops have been mobilized into Europe.
The $1T/year US military budget is insanely large. Chucking a few $B to Ukraine is not deteriorating anything. Supporting Ukraine is basically a cheap way to tie up Russia and use up old equipment that would have been retired anyway.
US defense industry is known to keep making new stuff and retiring the old in order to keep production lines from dying. There is a very deep reserve for all that stuff. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CmXz8Qd9yw
As for Taiwan, after the war started, Biden made removed the ambiguity around US involvement. And Taiwan has been preparing for a Chinese invasion far longer than Ukraine preparing for the Russian invasion (mostly since 2014). At this point, it's clear that if China invaded Taiwan, they'd have to do it entirely themselves. I don't think they're ready to take that risk.
No, it doesn't, except in the sense that the conflict would have to shift to favoring Russia for it to be plausible for it to be “drawn out.”
Russia has already seen casualties that are probably on the order of those the (much larger) Soviet Union saw in its decade long war in Afghanistan, and significantly higher among senior officers—and that wars toll was a significant factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the toll on equipment which they have basically no way to replenish has been high as well.
> Last time I checked Russia had a 10/1 advantage in heavy artillery
Don't know when you checked, but Ukraine has been getting a flood of artillery from the West, with longer range guns than the Russians have.
> has not mobilized its army
They haven't done a formal mass conscription, instead doing a backdoor mobilization, but that's kind of irrelevant since they are running out of first-tier combat-ready equipment, pulling older stuff out of stores to send to the front.
> fighting with 1/5 of its available peacetime forces
Maybe in total manpower. One of the many reasons for the high casualties in senior officers (besides the inability to delegate in land forces) is that their combat-capable pilots are a narrow corps that is senior-officer heavy, and they have a similar issue with other critical specialty forces, and those can't be replenished on any reasonable timescale.
> has suffered massive casualties among its most capable forces.
Russia has suffered massive casualties both overall and among its most capable forces, and expended a lot of its most capable equipment, and no one is rushing them replacements.
Russia has had significant difficulty finding troops, and has taken various and ominous steps such as expanding the age limit of eligible soldiers, sending in their training teams, drawing troops from otherwise important geopolitical areas, and dipping into pretty much every reserve they have.
Russia has many many more people, but it has shown hesitancy to do a general conscription. People don’t want to fight in this war.
It is save to say that they are not fighting an all out war and it is not just because it is unpopular but because they don’t need to yet. Ukraine has already mobilized everyone they will likely ever be able to mobilize and has run out of domestically available stockpiles.
It’s not safe to say that at all. They’ve abandoned 2 major objectives and have lost tens of thousands of troops. Morale is at rock bottom. It will be very difficult to pull off a general mobilization in Russia, especially in Moscow.
An all out war would mean full
mobilisation of the 2-4 million soldiers Russia has, strategic bombardment on a much larger scale, a war economy. Russia is fighting with a full-strength expeditionary force, Ukraine has conscripted every man of fighting age they could find and has forbidden men from leaving the country.
Ukraine has huge reserves of applicants for war that need training time. They’re hardly at max strength. It’s just a gradual build up.
Russia doesn’t have strong strategic bombardment capabilities, nor even air superiority. They’re also running out of military hardware needed to make use of. Their shitty 80 year old tanks are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Again, yes, Russia could go all out. They could launch nukes. But it’s something that would be very difficult. Putin may not survive if he tries to mobilize Moscow.
Which two objectives? They got their land bridge for Crimea and are almost fully in control of the Donbas. They also have ensured Ukraine can't join NATO now, unless they want to officially cede all of that land to Russia in exchange for peace, since a requirement to join NATO is that a country be in control of their borders.
From a logical standpoint, why would they want Kyiv and western Ukraine? 90% of the natural resources are in the east in addition to the reasons stated above for wanting control of those areas.
>They also have ensured Ukraine can't join NATO now, unless they want to officially cede all of that land to Russia in exchange for peace, since a requirement to join NATO is that a country be in control of their borders.
This was true before the start of the current war in February, and had been true since 2014.
Said war has made NATO making some sort of exception for rump Ukraine as member significantly more likely to happen.
> From a logical standpoint, why would they want Kyiv
You tell me. Russia certainly tried to seize Kyiv in the opening days of the invasion. I think that bloody action carries more weight as a statement of intent, than your question does. Also, I think you were aware of it.
They certainly attacked Kyiv, particularly a lot of the infrastructure that could be used to counter Russian efforts in the Eastern part of Ukraine. Attacking and wanting to annex are two different things though, and there is nothing outside of our untrustworthy mainstream news media to suggest they ever planned to occupy the entire country.
I actually don't think they've abandoned Kharkiv, and I don't think Kyiv ever really was an objective. Kharkiv makes sense for several reasons (sizable Russian population, proximity to border and located near vast amounts of natural resources) while Kyiv is nothing but problems with no return.
Ukraine being able to (at least temporarily) push the Russians from Kharkiv was huge for them, while the attack on Kyiv always seemed like just a list of targets that Russia just wanted to take out early on. Of course, I have no idea what is going on behind the scenes so who really knows.
Well: Melitopol and Berdyansk and Kherson taken without a fight. Mariupol fell, Izyum fell, Liman fell and now Severodonetsk is falling. 90% of LNR is now controlled by Russia and allies. That's a lot of consistently poor performance for you.
I don't think you are qualified to read Russia's military bloggers. They usually write things such as "in this and that division, there are such and such problems". How does that translate to your claim that morale (of whom? of everybody?) being at rock bottom (for how long?)
You’re welcome to believe otherwise. I feel optimistic. Donbas may fall. I think Ukraine will be able to hold off the rest and retake significant territory in the south.
I am unsure, a long term conflict would lead to both rising food and energy prices, both China and India still trade with Russia. It might further motivate technological independence from the west of those countries. Overall it could just accelerate the decline of the West and Europe in particular and a final shift of power to Asia.
China and India cannot make up for the loss of the European markets, at least not for many years to come. The gas and oil pipelines can't be moved to pipe the other way.
Technological independence is easy to say and incredibly hard to do. Neither does independence means superiority or equality. Many forget that investment in technology takes time and comes at the expense of other things. China and Russia have budgeting constraints that will pull them away from investment in technology.
Probably true. But there's no situation in which Russia ends up richer for having gone to war than had they not bothered in the first place. Which is to say, everyone has lost already. It's a tragedy for all parties -- and it's Putin's fault.
If they manage to capture the coast including Odessa and the Donbass, they will have recovered a large chunk of the Russian speaking population lost after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and add a lot of industrial capacity. Long term this would benefit Russia, Ukraine would be reduced to a rump state.
But yeah the pre-2014 situation would be vastly better for all sides involved. Ukraine could have taken the Belarussian or Khazak trajectory.
While Donbas has historically been an important mining and industrial region, I've read that it has been in steep decline for many years. Due to low productivity of the industries and the high cost of services for the aging population, it is seen as a net economic loss for whoever takes it. I've read speculation that this is one reason why the Kremlin resisted annexing Donbas for so long. (There were initiatives from Donbas to get annexed the way Crimea was, because they were tired of being in legal limbo, but the Kremlin refused.)
IT would take one small ($1 mil?) covert operation to blow up NS1 in two-three places to erase 40% of Russia budget revenue overnight. Sadly the only countries capable and crazy enough to do it seem to be leaning on wait and see approach (Israel) if not outright appeasing Putin (France).
Yes. Ukraine is already struggling to halt the slow grinding Russian progress in the east. I don't see the conflict ending until Ukraine either retakes the lost territory (in months? years?) or loses Western support and becomes simply unable to carry on logistically.
> Ukraine is already struggling to halt the slow grinding Russian progress in the east.
This war was supposed to last 3 days. It is now day 101. Russia was supposed to take kyiv. It was entirely pushed back. It then tried to take Kharkiv, and was entirely pushed back. It’s now trying to settle for severodonestk in the east and it’s not clear that they will take it despite a very large manpower advantage in that area. Meanwhile their control of southern areas like Kherson is beginning to falter.
Already struggling to halt progress in the east seems like a wildly misleading claim. Significant advances have been completely repelled.
I have been reading ISW's daily updates since the war started. The shift from enthusiasm for Ukraine's victories to frustration in the east has been palpable. Ukraine is fighting at its limit and Russia still inches forward. Opportunistic counteroffensives near Kherson have not yet broken out.
I want Ukraine to win quickly and decisively and every dollar we spend sending them stuff is well-spent. But I think it's going to be a slog. OTOH Ukraine will not back down and I think the Western backing is probably pretty deliberate, serious, and long-term. We want this to be Russia's second Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is about what I'm expecting.
Grimly, I am somewhat satisfied that Europeans are being reminded of the fury they must summon when an enemy arrives aiming to crush them like ants.
I’m surprised you can read the ISW updates and have that be your take on the situation.
My primary takeaways from them recently:
* Russia is having serious problems getting troops
* their execution is terrible and all of their successes are very costly. Even Russian mil bloggers are complaining about this.
* the push for the east is coming at great cost but provides basically no strategic benefit
Recent news as of today has suggested significant Ukrainian success in severodonestk but let’s see. I expect the city will fall eventually. If it doesn’t then… idk, I feel like Russia has all but lost the war.
ISW has shifted to trash talking the Russian military effort because news from the front isn't fun anymore. I enjoy the news of Russian dysfunction as much as any Ukraine ally, but if you read below the fold it's exactly as I said.
I am hopeful that Ukraine can grind some asymmetric attrition out of Severodonetsk. Maybe that is why we are beginning to see some good news out of the city. Maybe they hope to turn it into Stalingrad with Russia on the other side this time.
I think Ukraine is taking a beating from the currently superior Russian artillery and I suspect that's why they can't help but slowly lose ground right now. They need neutralizing weapons (on the way but needs to be quicker and more) and they need to leverage their many tactical advantages in urban warfare. Ukraine has an amazing fighting force but there's only so much they can do while being pounded by long-range artillery on the flat terrain of the Donbas.
I’m not convinced it’s so trivial just because it’s entertaining.
These are Russian mil bloggers. The most pro Russian military needs you can get. Some of them are embedded with the troops. They have only recently started to be very critical of Russian military leadership. I think it reflects an inflection point. They’ve lost a lot of their officers. Their leadership is shit. Their units are disorganized, demoralized, and comprised of various half depleted units smushed together. Their logistics and intel are poor. I think its just a leading indicator of reduced fighting capacity.
Yeah, I don't really think they have another 100 days in them without internal crisis far worse than what they feared in an early retreat.
The Ukraine is wise to stay away from the table and slowly grow stronger. I can't imagine a workable plan for Ukraine to keep Russian empire dreams from threatening it again in short order aside from keeping Russia politically trapped in military conflict until exhaustion. Hopefully enough of the west will support them even if they never go back to the table.
I hope they are seeing the whole picture clearly. Historically, Russia has demonstrated tremendous will to fight on in a degraded state.
At the very least, at the end of this war, Putin must be persuaded that the cost of additional invasions is not worth the benefit. The West must arm Ukraine to the teeth and hope this is accomplished. I am certain he will try to take as much as he believes he can.
Good question. Maybe you should ask the Ukrainians why they didn't surrender on day 3. In fact, why didn't they welcome Russia as liberators? Did the Evil West whisper in their collective ears, like Rasputin, casting a spell on them to become our puppets?
Or... could it simply be that Ukrainians hate the Russian invader as passionately as Russians still hate the Nazis today? Passionately and rightly, for invading their country and slaughtering millions of their people?
Putin, the delusional fool, has no idea the depth his evil imprint has forever laid upon Ukrainian-Russian relations. He thought that shared history, religion, etc. would excuse the oceans of blood, an entire nation's livelihood disrupted and destroyed. He thought he could brutalize Europeans into submission.
Can it simply be that eventually Ukrainians understand that the deal was always like I have described it in the previous post?
Ukraine is very diverse country. It still considers citizens of Crimea and LDNR of its own, but I'm pretty sure these are now hating Ukraine passionately. Especially after many, many acts of Ukraine bombing Donetsk in absense of any sensible military goal.
If the boys and girls from Kievan twitter hate Russia with passion, that is survivable.
> Can it simply be that eventually Ukrainians understand that the deal was always like I have described it in the previous post?
That still leaves my same question. If their understanding is the same as yours, why did they not surrender on day 3 as you said they should?
Could it be that Putin has activated their national identity by threatening them into collective self-defense?
And now that they have held their own despite being brutalized, do you think they will forget their achievements and hand over their lives to their attackers? Perhaps they have gained more self-respect than that. Perhaps they see themselves as more than just collateral damage in some great power struggle.
> Ukraine is very diverse country. It still considers citizens of Crimea and LDNR of its own, but I'm pretty sure these are now hating Ukraine passionately. Especially after many, many acts of Ukraine bombing Donetsk in absense of any sensible military goal.
Unfortunately there is no one to tell us what Donbas Ukrainians think, free of propaganda. But it will become clear soon enough.
For now all I have is this poll [1], conducted in January, which says a plurality of Donbas residents prefer to be part of Ukraine. I can't imagine that sentiment towards Russia has warmed since Putin's horrific invasion. In fact, polls say it's overwhelmingly negative [2,3], which is hardly surprising given Putin has destroyed these people's lives for no reason.
In the poll of [1], only 20% of LDNR pollsters are saying they want to be a part of Ukraine. The rest of the article seems to be working around that number, which represents the total failure of the Ukrainian state. They have lost Donetsk for good.
Perhaps they have indeed lost the small parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts that comprise the separatist republics. It's no reason to give Russia another inch beyond those, since the people in the remainder overwhelmingly oppose Russian control of their lands.
This poll also shows that people are overwhelmingly like to vote for the status quo.
The status quo for quite large part of that land is now "Russian military administration". That, combined with the fact that Ukrainian forces bomb civians such as the attacks on Kherson, allows Russia to try and keep it.
You assume that surrendering is without a consequence to Ukrainians. When in fact we can expect pretty much Ukrainian genocide which was both declared by Putin and can already be seen in occupied territories with executions, rapes, concentration camps, deportations, forbidding language etc.
When you have to defend yourself you defend yourself. Arguing otherwise is immoral.
Also, Ukraine loosing ensures russia attack other countries (using Ukrainians no less). That's why all the countries next in line are the most supporting Ukraine's defense i.e. Poland, Baltics, Sweden, Finland etc.
> already be seen in occupied territories with executions, rapes, concentration camps, deportations
I hope you have heard that Ukrainian parliament had to fire Denisova, who was responsible for watching human right violations and was making claims out of thin air. A lot of western press quoted her fervently.
So unknown part of these allegations is compromised.
> forbidding language
Say ukrainians, who are working in limiting Russian usage for 30 years already.
If they were to surrender on day 3 they will get a puppet government (of ukrainians) and most of their country intact (no Crimea, but Donbass could be reintegrated). But that's mostly off the table now.
No wonder Ukrainians are so anti-Russia now. During this invasion, they and all their infrastructure have been made cannon fodder for Putin's ego. If they capitulate, they will be conscripted to be cannon fodder for Putin's ego again.
This is the grim destiny of those who submit to Putin's self-styled resurgent Russian Empire.
Russia made its objectives very clear, and then changed them when they failed to manifest. It’s very fair to say they failed to achieve their goals. They’re now shooting for much milder goals.
Yeah that opening line was a giveaway. I thought Ukraine’s own defence minister says Russia now controls 20% of Ukraine as little as a few days ago. What changed?
I don’t really think Russians were to take Kyiv at all. It all looked like a threatening operation which could have been effective if the Istanbul agreement were signed.
They are not fools, and taking Kyiv is an impossible task with the limited allocated resources for this campaign.
Besides that Russians clearly understand that they will succeed only in Russian-speaking regions, which they actually did.
Assuming Russians were running an occupation campaign in the first phase is very wrong. They did not put any own city administration anywhere, left big gaps and gray areas and did not fortify their positions.
It’s also good to ask yourself, why Russians never bombed government buildings (while they managed to successfully bomb pretty much everything in Kyiv). And more importantly: why Belarusian pocket army never took part, though being ready on the border. My guess is that if it were an occupation campaign in the first phase, Belarusians would start clearing cities on the back of Russians.
There are more questions, than answers, but it’s fairly clear that once Russians pass the fortified (in the last 8 years) Donetsk region, they will be able to move much faster. However I don’t think they will - there’s not much interest in occupying territories with no coal or gas, and with hostile population.
I am accepting bets, that once Kramatorsk story is over, they will take Odessa region, and will try to take Kharkiv.
The military support west is providing will not win this war. Like with artillery and tanks - you can have weapons, but teaching properly artillerists and tank teams takes half a year at least.
It’s not me being pro-Russian, but trying not to underestimate the enemy and not to take him as a fool. It’s a good practise to be overly pessimistic and assume worst-case scenarios. Especially considering that in the second phase not a single city was retaken by Ukrainians, but only lost
Oh, it was a very real plan. With hundreds of armored vehicles on the way, helicopters with elite russian forces landing in Hostomel airport, semi-surrounding Kyiv and so on. The plan largely depended on Ukraine not mounting effective defense and surrendering in shock.
Ukraine has a very effective artillerie, which with west supplied arms gets even better. The problem is quantities, with russia having tons of old deadly junk to throw and west arms coming in too slow.
You might be partially right, Russian military bloggers state this version too. Like there were tons of money invested into bribing Ukrainian political forces but it was stolen on both sides.
However, right before retreat Russians were not in a disasterous state at the borders of Kyiv. In fact they were slowly closing the circle around it. If the focus were there, and additional forces were applied, it could have succeeded.
Russians had heavy losses during deployments, but once positions were taken it all stabilised for them, so it was not as disasterous as many say. It was not that Ukrainian forces pushed Russians back, but more like Russians regrouped.
From what I see in the last weeks, Ukrainian artillery is not capable of achieving goals. It could have been different before, but now a lot of videos from Ukrainian brigades depict that artillery support is missing and they go to battles without any support.
> I don’t really think Russians were to take Kyiv at all.
This is a reasonable sounding theory and I've seen it elsewhere, particularly from French sources. I'm pretty sure it's wrong, though. This theory comes from looking at everything the Russians did at the start and trying to interpret it so that it all makes sense. The truth, I think, is simply that Russian planning was a disaster.
Any military operations have multiple goals with different level of importance. I won’t argue that one of the points could be capturing Kyiv if lucky. Otherwise, putting pressure and distract military brigades while occupying Kherson and Mariuple were also on the list for sure. I assume military planning is made around probabilities and importance. If occupying Kyiv was the main goal, then we would have definitely seen Belarusian forces join the campaign, especially taking the fact they were less than 100 miles from Kyiv.
I had heard that the Russian troops on the way to Kiev had anti-riot gear and very little ammunition. The impression I got was that Russia hoped to topple the entire Ukrainian government and install their own puppet government in a relatively bloodless campaign. We all know how that turned out.
Just bomb it, no? They send perfectly targeted missiles to Yavrov thousands miles away, but never had a single shot over the government buildings? Wtf, Putin?
It’s not that simple IMO
I think the idea of first stage was:
1. Put the pressure
2. Sign a peace agreement
And being honest, from todays perspective, it better should have been signed.
Why would occupants want that? Real occupants for instance never cared about Saddams or Muammars life’s.
Why would Putin want to see Zelensky alive if his goal was to overtake the government
I peg Russia's failures to 2 things a)lack of experience(they haven't been in a ware in ages). and b)where the hell are the drones? it's 2022 for crying out loud. Wars are not won with big-iron anymore, you can buy/build a fleet of drones for the price of one single jet fighter. Wait till they build tortoise mimicking sea drones, then it's bye-bye aircraft carriers. The missile of a manpad cost 38k, lookup ukraine's "punisher drone" to understand what Im talking about.
The point is, Russia needs to level up, before the world take them for a lame duck super-power and the West decides to bring some freedom and liberation to the siberian region!!
What alternative reality you are thinking about, for crying out loud? Both sides are using drones heavily every day, Bayraktars, Mavics and heavier DJI's on one side; Orlans, Mavics and heavier DJI's on the other side, not to mention the home-grown ones on both sides. Do you even know which topic you are commenting on?
I am waiting to see swarm drone attacks. Has anyone tried it yet? I think the money bracket is just right for this kind of experiment. 38k for one manpad missile (check). cheap disposable long range heavy lifting drone<approx 50k??> (check). Software onboard to support swarming (check). So say a million for a swarm of 10?? 10 synchronized explosions would make a sizeable hole in the ground right?? Seems the problem would be stealth and anti-jamming tech.
This is war. Billions are still flowing to Russia for natural gas. It would be neigh impossible for Russia to export natural gas to alternative markets. So if you really want to weaken the Russian war effort...
... set an EU-wide tarriff on Russian gas. Subsidise EU energy independence with the proceeds: alternative natural gas sources, green energy production, energy savings, ... And make more structural social corrections to avoid energy poverty.
> Russia has failed to achieve most of its objectives in Ukraine because...
The Russian military has a lot of problems, sure. But the failure of the initial operation was because they were completely deluded about what to expect. If they had understood what to expect, they would have prepared differently. It is wrong to keep using "capabilities" as the explanation for the failure.
> Russia's failures will force the Russian military to fundamentally rethink its...
None of the Russian military's problems have come as a surprise to the Russians. Take the corruption, for example. It's been a major point of discussion for centuries. They will most likely continue to deal with these problems as they have always done.
> ...roughly a dozen Russian generals and other senior officials were killed on the battlefield...These firings and deaths may have exacerbated command and control problems that the Russian military was already experiencing.
This has already been discussed a lot online, that Russian military doctrine requires senior officers to lead from the front, so higher casualties among officers are expected. Some comments in this article indicate a poor understanding of Russian military culture.
> In practice, the BTGs were likely understrength and lacked sufficient infantry.
That's an understatement. The units initially sent in were at peacetime strength, which means they were lacking a major portion of their personnel. For example, armored units apparently deployed without any footsoldiers.
> ...Russian army...lacked a professional corps of noncommissioned officers.
This talking point has been overdone. European militaries traditionally had "commissioned officers" who were upper-class, and "non-commissioned officers" who were lower-class. You can't have that kind of class distinction in a proletarian society. Just because the Russian army doesn't have "NCOs" doesn't mean they don't have people with equivalent training and responsibilities.
> ...the tendency of poorly trained Russian forces to conduct massive bombardments of towns and cities in a war of attrition, rather than conducting basic fire and maneuver, will make it difficult to seize and hold substantial territory...
Observers of the war are increasingly admitting that artillery still rules the battlefield. Even President Zelensky recently expressed frustration that countries keep sending them missiles when what they really need is artillery. The front line, maintained by artillery support, has become pretty stable. Advance by either side will likely become increasingly hard.
> Russia has a recent history of attempting to grind out military victories.
Recent? Are you kidding? Doesn't anyone remember WW2? Anyone who thinks the Russians will eventually shrug it off and go home really doesn't understand their history/culture.
> The status quo is also unlikely to be acceptable for Ukrainian leaders...
The odd thing about this is that even before 2014, some Ukrainians were floating the idea that they should ask the Donbas region to split off. In interviews after 2014, Ukrainian politicians would privately say they would rather not reintegrate the Donbas. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30698057) So it seems that the Ukrainian leadership is forced to push for something that they don't really want.
> Over the past eight years, Moscow has seized larger portions of Ukrainian territory and tried to overthrow the government.
This ignores what the Kremlin's motivations have been. They didn't want to annex Donbas. They wanted to keep it integrated with Ukraine so the ethnic Russian population there could exert influence on Ukrainian politics. It is unclear at this point whether the Kremlin has given up on that.
The opening comment makes its seem like this is now all in the past. I think its a bit early to comment on how much Russia achieves here - this is very much WIP with a lot dependent on the solidarity in the West and the reaction of the populations to the cost of the war and the war effort as it drags on.
It's fair to say though that Russia bungled the start and miscalculated the cost benefit of this war.