Russia vs Ukraine critical assessment

[Vyn]

I understand why NATO won’t yet get involved but where does it stop and at what point is enough enough?

It stops when we have a leader here in the west that isn't a gutless brainless boob.  Putin sensed the weakness.

Oh for fuck's sake. The world doesn't revolve around whoever the president of the US is.

[Charger]

I understand why NATO won’t yet get involved but where does it stop and at what point is enough enough?

It stops when we have a leader here in the west that isn't a gutless brainless boob.  Putin sensed the weakness.

Oh for fuck's sake. The world doesn't revolve around whoever the president of the US is.

No it doesn't but it does make a difference though. The US has been such a center in world politics for such a long time...sometimes by choice sometimes by accident.

It is clear that Putin did what he did because he did indeed sense weakness in the west...not just in Sleepy Joe but in Europe as well...

However I do think he misjudged things a bit as Europe did manage to stand together on this and put on quite the sanctions list (which ofcourse hurt us a lot too) which drives the economy down in Russia.
BUT he did know that the west would never EVER get involved military wise in the conflict...and of that he was right.

Say what ever you say about Sleepy Biden one thing is for sure he is predictable...and for someone unpredictable like Putin that kind of an opponent is the best kind, because you can always tell what they do, or to be more precise, what they WON'T do...
That was most certainly not the case with Trump. And Putin knew that too and that's why I think he was bit more cautious in his actions during Trump's era.

[Zzzptm]

Except Putin wasn't "cautious" during Trump's presidency. He was comfortable in Trump's unraveling of long-standing alliances with NATO partners. Trump was getting set to have the US exit NATO in his second term, which would have left Ukraine out to dry.

I'd also argue that predictability is not a bad thing when the overall strategy works whether or not the opponent knows it. Biden will apply economic sanctions and refrain from direct military involvement. OK, but knowing that does nothing to lessen the economic impact of the sanctions. The ones imposed in 2014 over Crimea and Donbass were already harsh on Russia's economy: the current ones hearken back to Soviet-era sanctions, and those are sending the Russian economy to the same place it was in 1991, when the USSR imploded.

The West does not have to be directly involved militarily for the Ukrainian conflict to end with a Russian strategic defeat. The Russian plan was to grab all the major ports, Kharkiv, and Kyiv and then say it's a done deal for them to take whatever concessions they wanted. That was supposed to have been done in 15 days' time, starting right after the Beijing Olympics - more on that, below. Well, it's 15 days in, and the Russian assault on Mariupol is in its final stages, but not yet finished. The Russian attack on Odessa failed outright. Kharkiv and Kyiv are under attack, but not in Russian hands. Russian military operations have been hampered by terrain - it's too damn muddy, resistance - there are too damn many Stinger missiles, and its own morale - they have too damn many conscripts. The rapid offensive never got off the ground and now it's a grinding war of attrition, with no prospects of funding it or ginning up enthusiasm at home.

OK, so the China angle... I have my answer why the tanks didn't roll on frozen ground: China insisted that any Russian attack be done after the Olympics, and that was 24/25 Feb. It was also supposed to be quick, because China depended on Ukrainian grain imports. Now Russia has a mess on its hands, the grain isn't going to China, and China has to resort to alternative payment arrangements to get Russian oil. China itself doesn't have allies - it's always had the "Elder Brother" attitude in dealing with neighbors, who had to be tribute states or trading partners. Whether Russia knows it or not, it has grown increasingly dependent on China over the years, with the 2014 sanctions accelerating that dependency.

With Russia in a mess, it's going to become even more dependent on China. If it tries to go the North Korea route, then it absolutely becomes a Chinese tribute state - and its Far Eastern territories could wind up being sold off/annexed/granted "autonomy" for China to restore its old Qing Dynasty borders. If Putin himself doesn't learn to bow towards Beijing, then it's likely the Chinese apply pressure inside of Russia to get a new leader there who will.

Because of sanctions, Russia is forced to sell oil to China. China is not going to pay the going rate for that oil, but will get it at a discount. Again, China is the Elder Brother in that equation, and deeper sanctions impacts will mean Russia has to concede more and more to China in order to survive under Putin. Now that the attack on Ukraine has stiffened the resolve of Taiwan and the nations that border the South China Sea, if China is looking for a political victory through expansion, the trans-Amur provinces look like the place to get it from a Russia in dire economic circumstances. China benefits as Russia flails away its strength in Ukraine. It could be that China winds up as the winner of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

[Zzzptm]

Another thought, coming off of what I'm reading about China: Putin's nuclear threats can't be backed up. If he does go nuclear, the West responds, and China picks up the pieces. A nuclear exchange is essentially handing victory to the Chinese outright. It's a bluff, has to be.

[Zzzptm]

Oh wow, another gem... let me recommend strategypage.com for the avid reader, I've read these authors since back in the days of the old Strategy & Tactics magazine, and they're excellent analysts.

https://strategypage.com/qnd/china/articles/20220308.aspx has the Chinese analysis I was using in my posts above. Scrolling down to Feb 26, there's a part about the Chinese connection to the Russian army truck debacle in Ukraine: they're using cheaper Chinese knock-off tires, which work great on roads. Not so much off the roads... Chinese spare parts for trucks and radios have also been failing in the weather conditions.

[Typhon]

It is astonishing how many people continue to make excuses for Biden's incompetence.   

[Zzzptm]

It is astonishing how many people continue to make excuses for Biden's incompetence.   

As astonishing as the people who forget that Trump held up Congressionally-approved $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in 2019 to press Zelensky to announce that he was investigating Biden? And who forget also that Special Ambassador Volker, who lied to protect Trump in the scandal, was at the time and still is a lobbyist for a firm that represented Russian interests in the Nord Stream pipeline until the sanctions hit a few days ago and they had to drop the Gazprom-owned client?

Oh yeah, Trump was hard on Putin all right. "Bromance" may be a bit strong to describe the relationship, but it's not far off. Pretty much every time they met, Putin had a big ol' ear-to-ear grin like he'd won the lottery or something.

As for incompetence on Biden's part, his administration just approved another $200 million in military assistance for Ukraine, which will include Javelin antitank and Stinger antiaircraft missiles. And for all its bluster, Russia has not dared yet to attack weapon shipments from the West. There's no reason to rush into WW3 if military aid, sanctions, and cheap Chinese spare parts and tires combine to halt Russian aggression. In two weeks, the Russians have dented Ukrainian borders. Lots of bombing and human tragedy, yes. But they've also only made limited progress against what was supposed to be a much weaker foe. By contrast, the Germans in 1941 managed to get all the way from Przemysl to Zhitomir - half of Ukraine - in 2 weeks. And *that* was coupled with major advances across Belarus and into the Baltics. It's the Russian military that wins the prize for incompetence here.

[Charger]

I think the incompetence of Biden (and EU leaders as well ofcourse) came already before the invasion began. Strong leaders would have stopped it from ever happening. They would have hit Russia hard BEFORE things escalated. That was the weakness Putin saw...the total inability to act...so he went on and acted instead. Ofcourse he totally misjudged the Ukrainians and their will to defend their country...but he was 100% right that the west would not interfere in any military way.

[Zzzptm]

I don't think that's how the situation works... the rules of engagement are that nations don't take out sanctions until after something sanctionable has happened. Otherwise, the target nation can claim being attacked/wronged and then do what it was going to do anyway. And there hasn't been an inability to act, just a refusal of the West to become militarily entangled. It'll remain a limited war, not a total war.

Reports now that Putin has started to arrest FSB intelligence heads that botched the assessment of Ukrainian politics and capability to resist. I would imagine that investigations will also try to see if money that should have gone for military improvements instead went to yachts and foreign accounts...

Look also at how things have changed since the invasion: there are no more surgical strikes: Russia is hitting residential blocks, refugee columns, hospitals - it's essentially blind to targets of military significance, like its ability to find targets is shut down. Kharkiv was supposed to have fallen within hours of the invasion starting, as it's just across the border. 2 weeks in, it's still well in Ukrainian hands. And should the current bombardments continue, what does a Russian victory mean? That Putin gets to be the king of the desolation? If he wants Ukrainian economic production to be a prize, he can't be indiscriminate in his destruction of the place. And if he doesn't want the population to resist in a decade-long civil war like during and after WW2, then he's going to have to stop his forces from raping and  slaughtering civilians. But he's also got to get his army to move more effectively and with what seems to be rigid command structures and people only getting told what they want to hear, that's going to be nearly impossible.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainians don't have to keep to the roads, so they can pick off the tanks which are moving in without enough infantry to cover their advance. Russian air assets are grounded due to weather concerns and are flying closer to the ground, making them easier targets. The largest attacks so far have only been a few battalions in coordination - nothing like a front-wide coordinated attack that we expected if there was a general invasion such as this.

I'm remembering how many in the world thought that the numerically superior and supposedly more advanced Russian army and navy would crush the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. Putin may have made the same blunder as Tsar Nicholas II in expecting sheer numbers to carry the day...

[Vyn]

It is clear that Putin did what he did because he did indeed sense weakness in the west...not just in Sleepy Joe but in Europe as well...

I'll buy that.

A Swede and a Finn got together for drinks one evening.

The Swede grabbed a bottle of booze, the Finn grabbed two glasses and set them on the table.

The Swede poured some booze into the glasses and they both sat down.

They picked up their drinks and the Swede said, "Cheers!".

The Finn said, "Are we going to drink, or jibber-jabber?"

 

[Zzzptm]

"Yesterday marked 21 years since I arrived in Finland."
"Did you celebrate with a beer and a sausage?"
"No. I've become Finnish. I told no one. I sat in the dark in silence and thought about herrings."
"That's the spirit."

[Typhon]

And the funniest joke of all . . .

People still actually believe this to be true.   

As astonishing as the people who forget that Trump held up Congressionally-approved $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in 2019 to press Zelensky to announce that he was investigating Biden?

[Vyn]

Well, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has this to say about shit actually going on right now:

“The United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory, and that means every inch. And if there is a military attack on NATO territory, it would cause the invocation of Article 5, and we would bring the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it.”

Maybe it's time to dispense with trying to bolster the U.S.'s stance via geopolitical gamesmanship, time to dispense with populist isolationism, and grab the bull of imperialist expansion by the horns and ride that bastard all the way to Moscow.

[Zzzptm]

@Typhon: It happened. Plenty of documentation around that. Facts are facts, and it's a sobering reality to explore just how much Trump did that directly benefited Putin's plans for Ukraine. Trump always put a smile on that butcher Putin's face.

@Vyn: With what army? And I ask that as a "how would it be done?" type of question. The US deployment in Europe is just at around 100K, recently reinforced by 14K, bringing the US contingent back up to strength from Trump's cuts. If NATO did go into Ukraine, there would be immediate issues of command-chain coordination with Ukrainian forces and the difference in Ukrainian rail gauge from that of the rest of Europe (Ukraine, along with the Baltic states, is still on Russian gauge, a holdover from Tsarist and Communist policies).

While the first one could be remedied in short order with liaisons, one would assume, the second means real logistical issues, supporting troops that far forward. Trains would have to be unloaded at the Polish/Slovak/Romanian border and transferred to Ukrainian-gauge rolling stock. The transfer points themselves would become strategic targets and would necessitate deployment of additional anti-missile defenses. Sea support from Odessa may be better for logistics (transfer of containers to trains already set for Ukrainian gauge rails) but exposes the supply line to Russian naval and air elements in the Black Sea. Not a cakewalk, since Russia deploys hypersonic missiles now. Even if they have a high dud rate, they're going to get some good shots through.

And that's going to bring up the subject of casualties: the USA right now is not united on the case for direct involvement. Until and unless that case gets made, we may not have enough popular support to sustain an extended conventional operation, which could prove to be more disastrous in the long run, geopolitically speaking. Specifically, if the US goes in and the war is unpopular enough to cost the President and pro-war politicians their jobs at the polls, an isolationist faction could very well hand over Ukraine to Putin and dissolve the US participation in NATO, which would leave the region even more exposed than it is now.

Myself, I'm not for direct military engagement, but if it was ordered by the President, I would support and understand his decision.

[Zzzptm]

In other news, Putin is pressuring Lukashenko to get Belarus involved in attacks on Ukraine. Lukashenko has falsely stated that Ukraine plans to attack Belarus, so that Belarus involvement may be imminent.

Russia is also recruiting mercenaries to go into Ukraine. This has a benefit to Russian propaganda as mercenaries do not count as official Russian soldiers in the tallies of killed-wounded-prisoners of Russian Army personnel. Roughly 16,000 "volunteers" from mercenary groups from the Middle East - likely ones that served in urban combat in Syria - have expressed interest in serving Russia in Ukraine.

The Wagner private military company, owned by one of Putin's close allies, has removed the requirement for previous military experience for hiring and is recruiting for operations in Ukraine. Again, use of mercenaries points to expectation of higher casualties.

While it is known that the Chernobyl reactor is disconnected from the Ukrainian grid, it is not known if it is being maintained (or properly maintained, for that matter) by Belarus. Lukashenko has claimed that it is so, but he is an unreliable source. The IAEA cannot confirm, so we're going to be hoping that the Belarus gang doesn't screw things up.

More confirmation from independent Russian sources that the 5th service of the FSB, the Dep't of Operational Intelligence, is being punished for bad intel. The head of the department and his aides are under house arrest, more may be so interdicted.