The question is raised by Russia. Intel leaked (as intel leaked before that was confirmed by Russian acts) points to possible chemical attack by Russia. — Christoffer

Neither Nuland nor Tucker Carlson are Russians.

And, your whole argument is "statements" by the government have no factual, or even critical thinking value (lab could "mean anything") ... yet "leaked intel" you find more credibly objective, true and no possible ulterior motives ... and somehow not statements from the government?

We know exactly what Russia is thinking and doing and planning because of Western "leaked intel"?

A lab doesn't mean anything. — Christoffer

It's basically impossible to have any intelligible discussion with this level of denial.

The question is about bio weapons, a weapon of mass destruction and if Ukraine has them.

As I say, for Nuland to respond with a ramble about "labs that don't mean anything", in the context of this senatorial hearing in the context of this war, in the context of possible escalation to Nuclear war, would be a delusional psychotic episode and the US government would institutionalize her immediately if there was no relevant link between the question and her answer.

If you want to learn what propaganda is ... all you got to do is reread your arguments here.

There is no credible way to say Nuland's statements are not incredibly concerning and obviously due to the fact there is WMD's in Ukraine, and there's no credible way to argue the CIA wouldn't know about it (and ... obviously the US government does know about it otherwise she wouldn't be talking about it) nor any way to argue there are some legitimate reason to tolerate it and, at best, be indirectly financing it.

And, as Tucker correctly describes, no one was really talking about it before Nuland talked about it ... and, even if it was true, to not then move / dispose of these labs by now (which, if they were all disappeared from Ukraine, Nuland could just confidently say "there are no bioweapons in Ukraine" as an answer to that question in the present tense; and if someone did bother to ask about the past tense, which is unlikely as not relevant for the current situation, she could anyways then confidently say given Ukraine's history "it has had bio-weapons in the past, yes" -- subject closed) is a fuckup of monumental proportions.

Tucker asks some excellent questions. You may dispute facts, but you cannot dispute that a question has been asked, and then it is a simple matter to figure out if it is a good question or not. As I said I do not trust anything without some verification - I watch news channels to get the facts about what each faction is saying. Their statements are valuable evidence, and revealing. — FreeEmotion

Totally agree, Tucker basically lays out a pretty good critical analysis of this truly extraordinary exchange. We certainly don't know the truth yet.

However, what we can more easily evaluate about the main stream news is how different people are likely to perceive things. Obviously Russian's aren't going to be bending over backwards to find some strange interpretation that Nuland is just talking about pharmacies in Ukraine with discounts coupon, that if Russian were ever to discover would aid their war effort tremendously, and, technically speaking pharmacies can have some sort of laboratory to mix drugs and pharmacists do moonlight as meth producers from time to time (and, could have developed meth recipes that would be the perfect stimulants to power the Russian war machine).

That's not evidence for fuck sake. That's an answer that you interpret as being questionable. — Christoffer

This is literally witness testimony. Nuland obviously knows about these labs.

What's more likely based on what we know so far about this war? A) Russia continues to use propaganda and desinformation to try and control the narrative. B) The US has leaked intel continuously in order undermine that desinformation and has proven to be correct information based on Russia actually acting accordingly. — Christoffer

This seems to me completely delusional.

You're saying US has leaked intel (are you saying this is "evidence" or more government statements that aren't evidence of anything?) ... in no way to try to control the narrative themselves? Just concerned truth seekers out to give the world an objective view of the situation on the ground?

Just as I said it can have variants of pathogens for research purposes that if released by bombardments could potentially be catastrophic for the entire world. — Christoffer

What legitimate research purposes? You're saying that there's legitimate purpose for Ukraine (a defacto ally of the US) to being doing it's own "defensive" bio-weapons research in multiple secret labs?

There are labs that do that kind of research: heavily regulated, super secure, of the large powers that deal in WMD's (not small corrupt countries). Any "defensive" measures against bio-weapons Ukraine could legitimately need, the US could easily do that research (as it does anyways in it's top security labs run by credible top-of-their-field researchers) and supply Ukraine with whatever information they could legitimately require to "defend themselves" against a bio-weapons attack.

There is literally zero possible "legitimate research" defense of Nuland's statements.

What's the hypothesis here, that Ukraine and the CIA have had the following dialogue:

Ukraine: Ok, you've given us a bunch of ATMG's and training and stuff, super cool, but how do we defend against a bio weapon attack?

CIA: Oh, you know, you just build a bunch of secret bio weapons labs ... you'll figure it out. It's really a "learn by doing" kind of thing, we can't really like "explain it" to you; kind of like, learning to play the flute or something; sure, you can come see us do it, and hear us talk about, but nothing replaces practice, practice, practice when it comes to the finger dexterity you need to work with pathogens that (if released, so definitely baby steps) could cause a global calamity.

Which, at least could explain why no one secured the labs, if you're learning by doing then you kind of need this sort of debacle to realize securing the labs during the military build up that may invade and find the labs / cause a second global pandemic with a single errant shell, is a good idea.

Russian combat effectiveness seems to have plunged. They're using reconstituted regiments now, forming new units out of ones cut down far from dull strength. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a totally normal process ... and may also be happening to Ukrainian forces. To say Russia is losing requires not just Russian losses, but more losses than Ukrainians (decrease in relative strength, not absolute strength). But, only Russian generals really have a good idea, likewise for Ukrainian generals about the state of Ukrainian forces.

This is borne out by the recruitment drive in Syria, consideration of using unreliable Belarusian forces, and use of Chechen irregulars and mercenaries like the Wagner Group as frontal assault units for their main effort on Kyiv. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This isn't surprising nor really indicates anything; a military is going to use the available assets the best it can; US equipped and advised jihadist fighters in it's proxy war with Syria, because it had those assets to use.

Also the abandonment of Kharkiv. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If the purpose is to cut Ukraine in half North to South then the purpose of all fighting in the East is simply to tie up Ukrainian forces until they can no longer effectively retreat to the West. If you want to retreat by civilian vehicle, that maybe impossible by now, and armor is vulnerable to air attack and whatever is left maybe out of fuel (maybe we didn't see much air power until now to not scare Ukrainian East deployed forces to retreat to the West).

If you're going to retreat on foot, according to google maps it would be 133 hour walk from Karkiv to Vinnytsia (that is a town just West of where the Russian pincers are likely to meet).

It's not possible to walk 133 hours in one go, so we can easily double that to 266 hours, which is 11 days (where you'd need to bring all the food you need, or then scavenge for it, and this assumes the optimum path as calculated by google).

Tying up the Ukrainians in the East and encircling them not only reduces significantly Ukrainian strength, but will almost certainly lead to a domino of surrenders of these encircled forces.

When people talk about sieges lasting years in ancient or medieval times ... the superb innovation of just in time supply lines had not yet been discovered.

If Russian generals see no way Ukrainian troops in Kharkiv can possibly retreat to West of their pincers in the time they calculate those pincers to meet, then there is no further need to keep pressure on Kharkiv and those troops can return to Russia and be circled around to reinforce the main pincers.

Some people keep saying that Putin “miscalculated”. But I think it is fair to say that Zelensky miscalculated even more. All he had to do was to promise not to join NATO and recognize Crimea and the Donbas as Russian. That would have saved half of his country from being reduced to rubble. — Apollodorus

Yes, and if the offer was bad faith and Putin attacked anyways, then it's far easier to legitimately claim there is an existential war happening with an enemy that cannot be dealt with diplomatically.

And even Putin's demands to pull back NATO to Germany makes rational sense considering the justification of that forward deployment was to send missiles to Afghanistan and NATO was "adamant" that was the reason literally stating it has nothing to do with Russia... which doesn't seem such a good justification anymore, and NATO just huffs and puffs that "of course they're not removing those missile bases! Don't be absurd! Delusional demands from the Kremlin!!".

Yes, but questions does not equal counter-evidence or counter-arguments. — Christoffer

You don't seem to be following the conversation.

What evidence do you have that any of these are bioweapon facilities? It's important to have clear facts. — Christoffer

The evidence is what Isaac just literally transcribed. We can assume Nuland knows whatever these labs are about, otherwise it's unlikely she'd improvise, and from her statement we can pretty safely conclude there is a military purpose for these research labs.

If you want to say she's making it up as she has zero knowledge of the situation or actually wants the whole world to believe the Ukraine military has bio weapons labs (WMD's) the US knows about and funds directly or indirectly ... then that's a possibility too.

A bioweapon facility, on the other hand, is something else. — Christoffer

Both Isaac and I have already commented that normal biol labs in universities, hospitals and private companies aren't really a concern if they "fall into enemy hands".

It's also an answer to the direct question about bio weapons ... so rambling about something totally different (legitimate biological research) in response to this question is at best some sort of delusional psychotic episode in the context.

Thanks for transcribing ... it's pretty common sense Tucker Carlson's questions, and credit where credit's due.

Government statements aren't facts. — Christoffer

Government statements represent the fact the government made that statement, and give rise to legitimate questions about those statements.

That's how journalism and democracy is supposed to work: representatives (such as senators), journalists and pundits (such as Tucker Carlson), random people too, ask questions and the government responds by answering or not, giving rise to more questions about the answers or then the fact the government is not answering.

In terms of evaluating facts from government statements, certainly anything can be doubted, but if it seems something they would usually keep secret if it's true ... such as bio "research labs" in Ukraine (that isn't so famous for it's cutting edge bio medical research that is a concern if Russia gets hold of it ... to just go cure cancer in Russia or something?!?) ... maybe they are saying it because it's true, Russians have secured those labs already, and they want to get ahead of the story with some counter narrative of what those labs were about.

It's quite clear what the plan is here and it's only fooling them who don't know how to sift through the propaganda BS. — Christoffer

The Wests own sources, such as the Nuland senatorial hearing above, or Western journalists regularly visiting Azov brigade since 2014, is not Russian propaganda. Russia cannot be accused of creating propaganda if it's material literally coming from the US government or Western media institutions like the Times.

Of course, Russia will take that material and also use it for propaganda purposes, but the logic that this material (that a CIA chief / "Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs" admitting to building a bunch of "Bio Research Labs"--that were obviously secret as otherwise we'd already know about them as just normal university or hospital labs--gives rise to completely legitimate questions regardless of how big a gift that is to Putin and the Kremlin).

Stop using FOX news as any kind of valid source. — Christoffer

It's a completely valid source for just showing the super strange Q&A with Nuland at a public senatorial hearing. Whatever this conversation represents, it's a fact that it happened, and legitimate to ask questions about it.

Tucker Carlson also simply has completely valid critical thinking questions: such as if the purpose of the labs was to destroy Soviet bio weapons: a) why would that take 20 years b) why would you need to to that in the Ukraine instead of just transporting them to a NATO country, and c) what's so concerning about the Russians getting their soviet weapons back (presumably they already know about them and know how to secure them).

Facts need to be sourced, but just literally showing government statements is a valid source of the fact of those statements.

Critical thinking doesn't need to be sourced, and good questions are good questions whether from Tucker Carlson, anonymous forum posters, Putin, or anyone else.

Russia is now trying to smoke screen a possible attack with chemical weapons by calling for a UN meeting where they will try and create a narrative that the US and Ukraine had a bioweapon lab in Kiev, thinking the world is gullible enough to fall for such bullshit as reasons to why we might see the result of bioweapons soon. — Christoffer

The problem with the bioweapons lab thing ... is that US seems to have admitted to it.

As surreal as it is, Fox News has some actual critical thinking about it:

— Christoffer

The guy Matsimus has surprisingly good videos and good video material. — ssu

Yeah, I think a lot of people base their expectations on Iraq and Afghanistan / first person shooter games.

We haven't seen much conventional warfare on television for decades, so I was looking for something more than just a demo video of a lot of explosions (which there are many), and this Matsimus is kind of a gold mine for contextualizing what we're seeing, and his latest video is just explaining why his lips are sealed about what he thinks of the current war, so it's a pretty rare resource that's not also promoting a point of view of current events.

↪boethius are you averse to including evidence/sources with your posts? — Changeling

I should have time today to look for sources, I'm not sure what sources you want.

One reason I try to avoid posting sources is simply that leads to accusations that the source is biased. This isn't a journalist forum, but more focused on argument, so I try to keep to arguments of the form "if the premises are true, the conclusions follows" and let people makeup their own mind about the premises. However, I'm not against sourcing, just takes a lot of time and, as @ssu has pointed out, there's a big fog of war element, we can only speculate about a lot of stuff; things can deteriorate rapidly in warfare.

That being said, for the foundation of my analysis of simply what conventional warfare is like to assess the battle field as best we can, since a lot of decision making depends on whether you think Russia will win or lose. Now, we can't really know Ukraine's prospects for victory, but presumably the Ukrainian leadership knows and NATO countries also know more than us. We criticize the Nazi's and Japanese for not surrendering to avoid unnecessary loss of life when there were no more prospects of victory--I see no reason why that criticism only applies to them because "they're bad". The "right" to fight to the death doesn't mean that's the best decision to make; just like if a bunch of ex-marines invaded your home, fighting back depends on A. prospects of victory regardless and B. if it's an existential threat (if they are there to torture, sry "enhanced interrogation" you, and then murder you then fighting back is a good decision if no one's coming to help ... but if they just want your frozen pizza's because the store ran out and then they'll be on their way, a low-odds fight to the death maybe isn't the best decision).\

Likewise, for the EU, supplying arms and hitting with sanctions isn't morally justifiable if it just results in more people killed and undermining European security for the next several decades. If the only possible resolution of the conflict is diplomatic, then that should be the focus. If there is a impasse in the talks (and Ukrainian negotiators being executed as "spies") then the EU could step in and offer things to Russia and also Ukraine and protect negotiators from being executed etc.

The current problem in the negotiations is Russia is already asking essentially the minimum that it won't possibly make any concessions on. However, the EU could not only offer things to Ukraine for also offer things to Russia who then offer "something" to make the settlement more sellable to Ukrainians.

Being in the EU already may simply motivate Ukraine to keep fighting from the West for several decades, which isn't really good for Ukrainians nor the EU.

Of course, diplomacy requires some evaluation of the war situation. If we think Russia is really, or then Russian leaders perceive, in a bad spot one negotiation strategy follows from that assumption. If Russia is actually getting what it wants the hard way and, at least leadership, perceives no risk of military loss or social upheaval in Russia, then a different negotiation strategy follows from that. If what Western media repeats as "super bad for Russia" is viewed by Russian leadership as a good thing (maybe they actually want a break with the West, but couldn't do that themselves as the Russian people would actually revolt about that, but if the West does it, that's grand; likewise, maybe Putin wants all Oligarch wealth to be seized by the West as it's wealth outside of Russia that is laundered around in corrupt schemes ... which Putin doesn't necessarily want corruption; you don't need corruption if you control the government, everything can be done "legally").

So, there is a purpose for evaluating the war situation and how Russian leadership and ordinary Russians perceive things, nor merely intellectual brainstorming.

A good source to start with is I found this Candian artillery youtuber with a lot of military analysis made before this war, and who has stated he cannot comment on the war due to Canadian Forces policy. So, all this material made before the war is presumably not biased towards Russia or Ukraine, and he is not commenting what he thinks now, so the channel doesn't promote one side or another.



This video is a bit long, but I think gives a real good feel for how hard and how much skills is required to be an effective infantry soldier.

One really important part, is the short bit about the positioning of trenches; takes significant skill for senior commanders to decide where to send soldiers to dig in, the strategic purpose, and then there's a chain of decision making all the way down to the squad leader positioning individual trenches and even then soldiers themselves deciding all sorts of details as seen in the video.

I think anyone who looks at this source will get a good feel for my view that handing out small arms to civilians is just killing people for no military justification. People with rifles will be fired upon by mortar and artillery, bombs dropped on them etc.

It takes significant experience and skill to a) always be hiding in a battle situation and b) have some idea if you're safe or not. Observers can sneak anywhere and order strikes from artillery tens of kilometres away, and observers then see where the shells land and send back corrections. Observers we rarely see talked about in the media, but are basically have the same sneaking around skill set as snipers, just an additional skill of knowing better where they even are and what direction their looking at and the distance to things they're looking at.

What the video also shows is the level of vulnerability of the soldiers when they first reach this position compared with the stage 6 trench they have built at the end. The combat effectiveness or "force multiplier" of the trench is several orders of magnitude. Of course, trenches don't move, so infantry can't bring this force multiplier with them to assault an enemy position. The tank is basically a trench that you can take with you.

Without serious armor and supporting artillery fire, and ideally air support as well, it's basically impossible for infantry to assault a well dug in position by themselves (why WWI resulted in one giant stalemate for so long).

Hence, we do see a lot of chaos in the East of Russian troops maneuvering around and they can be ambushed and harassed. However, if the strategy is to encircle the entire East, then the North-West and South-West pincers are being well dug-in as they go, and it really seems to me that Ukrainians can't do much about that with just infantry.

In particular any sort of conscript or civilian given a rifle, will have essentially zero effectiveness in any offensive maneuver. Infantry (alone) do have a few offensive maneuvers they can do, but it will almost always involve a "long sneak / death march" to arrive somewhere the enemy simply doesn't expect. This requires a high level of sneak skill, strength and endurance to carry stuff (weapons, ammo, food) many kilometres and still be effective enough to take enemy position; the utility of such maneuvers is also extremely limited as without armor infantry simply can't go very far and very fast, so even if you do take some enemy positions you can't really follow through to rout the enemy rear positions. If you look at a map of Ukraine and think about how far you can actually carry heavy stuff in a day, you'll get a feeling for the limitations of infantry maneuvers. Why armor is so effective at offensive maneuvers starts with simply being able to get to the battle in a reasonable amount of time; the difference in maneuverability is basically exactly the same as if you decided to do everything by walking instead of car or public transport for the next week.

And, once you have armor you have significantly more logistical problems: armor needs fuel and heavy ammunition. You can send someone with a bunch of food and a buddy with a bunch of ammo to resupply a whole infantry unit for the day, and these people will be hard to spot and difficult to kill even if you do spot them from the air; but you can't resupply tanks and armored personnel carriers and armored artillery on foot, so you need fuel and ammo trucks which can't just sneak around in the woods and marshes.

Likewise, why armor is so effective at counter offensives as well. If you look at a map of Ukraine and you imagine a position on a defensive line 20km away coming under assault ... if you have to walk there with your weapons, ammunition, food, it will take you the entire day and the whole battle maybe over by the time you get there. Ok, you can hop in a civilian car and drive there ... by any artillery or air strikes at all on the road between here maybe impassible to a civilian vehicle and if you some under artillery fire on the way, a civilian vehicle won't offer much protection.

Whereas having an APC solves a lot of problems compared to a civilian vehicle, and also can carry way more ammunition and brings along it's own machine gun and cannon that maybe useful too. However, even if the APC is immediately disabled when arriving at the battle, ATMG's are unlikely to just kill everyone inside (far more likely to be disabled than be totally destroyed), so the infantry can get out are "fresh" for the fight; if the area is secured, of even not, there maybe still a whole bunch of supplies in the APC that are incredibly useful for continuing the operation (conventional warfare, even by infantry with unmounted arms, consumes large amounts of ammunition, super difficult to resupply on foot whereas one APC arriving, even if immediately disabled, may still provide a significant amount of ammunition).

One last note, when we see online videos of tanks being hit by ATGM's, the large explosion can be the reactive armor working as intended, and super long ATMG shots can easily be at decoys.

Disabling an armored vehicle is not the same as killing everyone inside, and if the crew survives, Russia has plenty more armored vehicles. Even when we see totally destroyed armor, this could still be blown up sometime after the vehicle was disables and the crew escaped. Vehicles can be disabled by just driving over the wrong thing, but it is the skilled crew that is far more valuable than the vehicle. There are weapons that can completely obliterate a tank and everyone who dwells within the tank, but they are heavy weapons and not shoulder mounted ATGM's.

But the main thing to be taken away from the trench video, is that that's how to effectively use conscripts, and still requires learning how to dig and fortify a trench and experienced professionals deciding where it's useful to send people to dig trenches, and out of shape conscripts are going to need a lot of time and experienced sergeants regularly checking in on them to yell at them.

So, if you mobilized a month before an invasion you can secure a lot of positions and lazy out of shape middle-managers can even get in shape a bit.

And, once you've dug one trench, this in no way prevents digging more! You can then leave a tiny garrison in your front line trenches and have everyone else go dig a second line, third line, etc. You don't really ever get to the end of trench digging. No one has ever said "this is it, this is the last trench to dig".

But they would need more than just those ATGMs, but also artillery and medium range Surface-to-Air missile systems. — ssu

Yes, so far we've heard mainly about the ATMG's and Manpads, but there maybe other things in the pipe or stuff deployed in secret. But mechanized warfare requires serious training and logistics, so it's not clear to me what other weapons systems can be just thrown in.

But still, it's not going well for the Russians. — ssu

We really don't know how Putin and his generals evaluate things. Russia tolerates far more casualties than Western armies.

If Russia achieves it's objectives (which we don't even know at this point ... other than they are obviously in Ukraine), Putin, generals, Kremlin and even most ordinary Russians may view the war as a hard fought battle, but worth it.

In particular, people shouldn't underestimate how much ordinary Russians hate Nazism, and the West's own journalists have been documenting this movement in Ukraine since 2014. Whatever political / moral / policy discussions we may have about it, Russians will react to videos of these people (that they happily produce themselves) extremely negatively.

Also, it's estimated some 10 000 people have died in the civil war in the East since 2014 to the start of this war, so the logic of "getting it done" when Russians / ethnic Russians are dying anyways regularly, can make a lot of sense from the Russian perspective.

However, we really don't know much about what the average Russian is thinking about things (obviously sanctions are hitting, no one like wars--except those neo-nazis--, people are dying, and so on), but once the war is over there are many bases on which it could be considered "worth it" to ordinary Russians.

Russians were already demonized by our media before the war ... so, it's unlikely they care too much about even more demonization.

The Western media logic is mostly: we disapprove, therefore it's a blunder, therefore Russian troops are unmotivated, therefore Putin is looking for an off-ramp. But this logic is entirely self-generated.

Putin maybe happy to end the war with what he (from his perspective) reasonably asked, but he maybe perfectly content also cutting Ukraine in half and taking everything East of the Dnieper River.

Russians like land ... that's why they have the most of it already.

↪boethius are you averse to including evidence/sources with your posts? — Changeling

I'm not averse to it, but the whole point of my post is that we don't really know what's going on. Western media continuously say one unsourced thing, so seems appropriate to say the alternative scenario.

But the main source is just the maps of what territory Russia is holding / contesting, which clearly do advance everyday on the West-North and West-South main pincers. There's really no way to know about the state of those pincers in terms of soldiers, equipment, logistics, and likewise the state of Ukrainian resistance to those pincers.

There's also a whole bunch of maps made by different people with different biases and sourcing, none of which are "authoritative", but I assume anyone interested in this topic we're discussing checks on one map or another (or sees on TV).

What we can know is that if the pincers meet then the entire East of Ukraine will be encircled and that will certainly change the dynamic of the war (but not necessarily end it, as the West Ukraine can keep harassing and attacking from time to time ... potentially for years).

In terms of infantry being extremely poor at attacking maneuvers (without armor against dug-in positions supported by armor, mortars, artillery, planes and attack helicopters), this is based on my personal experience training for this sort of warfare. Never been in a war, but live fire exercises of this kind make it pretty clear that exiting the trench is extremely hazardous ... even to run away, much more so to run towards the enemy line.

It's not really in dispute that Russia has far more armor than Ukraine, and NATO could supply armor but then that needs training, logistics ... and Russia has plenty anti-armor weapons.

Hence, focus on sending Ukraine anti-tank guided missiles and manpads. These are extremely dangerous weapons for sure, but you can't really assault and take a dug-in position with these weapons; certainly harass supply lines and lay ambushes but they don't really help defend against a concentrated offensive. So, if Russia digs in on the sides of a pincer and has a concentrated offensive to move forward, there's not much Ukraine can do about it with ATGM's and manpads.

However, as I mention, deception is a large part of warfare, so if there's some game changing weapon or tactic ... maybe we don't know about it.

But if you want sources, feel free to ask which factual statement you want sourced and I provide more information.

All the commentary on Putin is simply arguments he could say to play things at home (his main audience), doesn't need to make sense to Westerners (just as what Trump said didn't make sense to us Europeans), and, of course, Putin may say something different. But @Isaac was simply pointing out that Putin hasn't stated more than extremely minimal objectives, so he can easily just set the bar at whatever has been achieved at any moment.

I'd also like to point out that the video posted also demonstrates a crap ton of those weapons these "volunteers" are holding: for sure going to organized crime, as we speak.

As well as even more advanced captured Russian equipment: straight to organized crime you go!

If you don't think people are making fucking bank ... you don't know people.

I think there's a sense among some people here that the war in Russia will be judged on the terms that we in Europe believe it to be really about — Isaac

For here a bit certainly, but the Western mainstream media basically take this idea as the gospel truth.

I think Putin is, as you say, in quite a strong position really. If the war goes his way, then it's obviously a win. If it doesn't then, well, it was only an 'operation'. It's not that nothing could count as a failure, but he's certainly hedged his bets. — Isaac

Yes, definitely Putin could stop at any moment and says he's achieved whatever he set out to achieve.

Fighting neo-Nazi's: shelled Mariupol to oblivion and decimated the Azov battalion base (I don't know where it is, but I assume it's something can blow up if they haven't already).

Russian core strategic interest: it's pretty clear to me Ukraine isn't in NATO, and Ukraine won't be building back buddy-buddy with the CIA anytime soon in my opinion.

Calling the Wests bluff and creating schism in NATO: don't see any sanctions on that sweet, sweet Russian gas (in the EU) and this whole thing about the jets is comical (US: we're working on getting Ukrainians jets! Poland: ok, we'll give them to you, you give them to Ukraine ... US: not tenable)

Key land captures to show for the blood spilled: land bridge to Crimea.

And that's just today.

If his forces can link up in the middle of Ukraine, then he can easily take everything East of the Dnieper river and passify largely Russian speaking areas with zero easy ways to smuggle in arms for an insurgency into that part of Ukraine (unlike the Western part) and proclaim protection from neo-Nazi's achieved for Russian speakers, for ever basically (and better protection of Russia for the next hundred years at least).

By offering throughout the whole war, the de jure status quo before the war, Putin can easily explain his good faith and good intentions (certainly to most Russians) to the end of his days, as all he wanted the whole time is just the fighting in the Dombas to end and a neutral Ukraine (to have peace and not nuclear war) and to blow up some neo-Nazi's; just a simple man really.

As soon as the war ends, the discussion will switch to how it started in the first place and how was anyone crazy enough to reject Russia offer to end it. It makes "emotional sense" now, but will make zero rational sense as soon as the War is over and the extreme damages to Ukraine and people's lives contended with.

We only hear the pro-war almost kamikaze level fanaticism side of Ukrainians (as you point out) but we'll hear other voices as soon as the war ends: and the viscous partisan fighting has only just begun.

And the reason Ukraine government doesn't take the deal (even if they see no way of winning; could be a lot of losses on the Ukrainian side and no functioning logistics) ... is that it would make the entire war effort make zero sense.

Which is pretty clever by Putin offering the status quo before the war.

It's both impossible to accept (as literally makes the whole war pointless, and Ukraine is obviously not being rescued by NATO nor ever going to be let in the club, so "fighting for that right" clearly makes zero sense also) and also absurd not to accept.

If Putin was actually worried about the military situation, he'd start high and then settle low, maybe offer some symbolic reparations etc. to sweeten the status quo deal.

Instead, Zelenskyy finds himself fighting an existential war with a foe that keeps repeating they just want the exact same situation as before the war, just de jure instead of de facto.

People that are against negotiation on principle can maybe consider police negotiators as a useful framework.

Do police negotiators just show up and call a hostage taker a crazy madman, and when the hostage taker denies it they just call him a liar too, and then leave?

The push south from the Kharkiv axis and North from the Kherson axis, to "cut off the eastern half," as you say, did appear to be the plan until a few days ago. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I honestly don't feel there's accurate enough information to make these sorts of conclusions on the order of days. If a position is held for a week, then it's probably well defended, but the back and forth during days isn't really revealing of overall strategy and force strength, and there also seems to be intense map propaganda at the moment of minimizing as much as possible Russian areas (could be true, but who knows ... and, I think all that really mattes strategically is the positions West of Kiev in the North and South and they seem pretty solid: no one has broken through to torch the convoy for instance).

However, we really don't know much about the state of the Russian forces and how their generals see things.

We have a huge amount of intelligence self-produced by Ukrainians, such as what just posted, but this will have an extreme survivor and positive spin bias.

And this video basically demonstrates well my explanation above that infantry are terrible at offensive maneuvers against an enemy line. Imagine if an observer spotted these guys and 10-20 shells and/or mortars landed on them (which we obviously wouldn't then get to see on the internet).

Russians need to establish forward operating bases; so "pauses" in the North and South main pincers seem more to do with that than they have been stopped. If they are stopped for a week, that would be one thing, but slow progress can just represent sorting out logistics and digging in on the flanks, installing artillery, and taking care of a bunch of details.

There's this narrative that Russian forces are "falling apart", but Russia can rotate in fresh troops, has a massive inventory of vehicles and artillery, and isn't going to run out of ammunition or diesel anytime soon.

Of course, doing the unexpected has strategic value, but the value of setting up a line North South seems so high, and the only way to end all the chaotic ambushes and anti-tank pick-offs, etc. in the East, that is the downside of having a super long front in the east (the advantage is that it ties up Ukrainian troops that can be cutoff on mass). Conventional warfare like this takes massive amounts of ammunition, so once units are cutoff their calculus changes pretty radically; they are for sure unlikely to go anywhere.

There's a lot of conversations I haven't had time to continue today, unfortunately.

However, since the Western media insists extremely strongly on the narrative that Ukraine is somehow winning, going to win, can hold indefinitely, I'd like to present here the alternative point of view of the military situation as such.

Of course, deception is a large part of warfare, so the Ukrainians could be planning some brilliant move to rout the enemy that launches at any time. Likewise, stories of Russian moral collapse could be totally true or then riots start breaking out all over Russia at any moment. There's definitely risks on Russia's side and predictions of obviously possible things always have a chance to come true. However, what we can be certain of is that all the retired generals and retired intelligence directors that hammer this impending Ukraine victory home, base that on absolutely nothing. The real experts acknowledge they don't know the situation on the ground for Russia or Ukraine.

So, that being said, the reasons to assume Ukraine is not going to bust out some brilliant move is that conscripts generally speaking, and especially conscripts that trained sometime in the distant past, are terrible at offensive maneuvers. Conscripts are effective at manning trenches and firing artillery mainly, and doing the logistics, cooking, repairing, medical evacs and nurse work etc.

Furthermore, even manning trenches and doing defensive maneuvers and planning logistics etc. requires professional soldiers and officers to keep things from falling apart. Of course, in a long war conscripts who survive can become professional soldiers through learning by doing, but we're literally 2 weeks into this thing. Keep in mind a big part of being an infantry soldier or even just doing logistics is just carrying stuff around and it takes time to build that strength.

Therefore, how a conscript army is supposed to work is that it's mobilized before there's an invasion and then all those conscripts basically go and dig trenches and sit in those trenches with a bunch of ammo (that even old out-of-shape conscripts can do with enough time). Once a conscript is in a trench, it feels safer to stay in said trench, and shooting randomly into the darkness seems like something to keep one occupied, and everyone else is doing it so seems reasonable to also shoot in the general consensus direction.

Which, as an aside, to me, explains the Russian invasion plan. Russia was in a catch 22 that if they made a better plan, Ukraine is likely to be tipped off and mobilize, so the plan would be better ... but Ukraine maybe way better prepared. And, pretty likely there's Russian soldiers just texting with friends in Ukraine who are asking "if they'll invade" and so on (and if all such chats suddenly went silent for weeks... maybe suspicious too; so you'd actually want your troops to be like "same ol' same ol' and that nothing seems to be going on"), which requires your own troops to be genuinely clueless there's an invasion (even officers would spook their troops by acting differently, if that was possible to keep a secret anyways outside the very top; hence "the plan" was likely Putin and 2 other people, then everything is launched in a week kind of thing). Of course, there's downsides to the total surprise, but there's also upsides. And in Russia, if troops get demoralized: off to Siberia!

The other reason it's difficult for Ukraine to launch some surprise offensive is that it's logistics and armor is far worse than the Russians. Russians also have anti-tank rockets and so on, but armor would still be good to have. The reason armor is so important--tanks, personnel carriers, and armored artillery, is that infantry are extremely easy to kill with explosions just walking around; and, even getting hit with a anti-tank missile doesn't necessarily kill everyone, they can still get out. So, to just get your infantry to the battle without being slaughtered by artillery it's useful to have armor. It may also seem "easy" to pick off a tank that's just sitting there (and maybe a decoy), but with artillery explosions and smoke and bombs and machine gun fire, and total chaos everywhere in an offensive maneuver, a tank is not some sort of liability for your own side.

So, if the above points are true, then it's essentially impossible to take back any significant positions from Russia (i.e. land that Russia is able to dig in and setup artillery and supporting logistics and organize it's defense). There has been push back in the East ... but those can easily be tactical retreat to then slaughter the advancing infantry with artillery.

Hence, if Russia can't easily lose any (important) land once taken, and can gradually take the land it wants by just enough artillery, rocket artillery and bombs to just obliterate whatever is there, then Russia plan seems obvious to me to keep as much of the Ukrainian army in the East as possible (just keep them occupied), and then complete the encirclement of everything East of the Kiev. Seems that position West of Kiev is built up and no going anywhere and, according to maps today anyways, seems to be extending salients now South of Kiev. It's just a matter of time until the North and South join up. Again, the "convoy" seems to me a giant parking lot of vehicles that are unneeded on the front (which is seems obviously well defended and also the air space), to make space for new vehicles in the rear bases (i.e. the vehicles that were intended for an uncontested entry into Kiev ... that Russia may as well have tried, but no longer needed in the current configuration; also, better to have a vehicle tens of kilometres closer if it is needed, than back in Belarus).

Having a line North South to the West of the Dnieper river not only encircles Ukraine but also means Russia can easily secure the River itself as more or less unassailable, so if Ukraine simply never surrenders and keeps harassing the Russian front indefinitely, Russia could always withdraw to the East side of the river and there's little Ukraine could do about that.

As I mentioned previously, if there's a lot of Russian speakers East of the river, then it's in Russia's interest to have the most intense fighting to the West (the exception being Mariupol, which seems to me anyways, a clear collective punishment for Azov brigade that's based there). Hence, Russia wants to tie-up as many Ukrainian troops in the East as possible, but not rampage through Russian speaking areas. So there's both a political and military purpose to advancing West of the river (a lot of commentators before the war were predicting a likely scenario of Russia taking East of the river; and the current strategy seems to be about that, but by creating first a line West of Kiev which also puts obvious pressure to surrendering). On the Eastern front Russia doesn't really have much risk in having inexperienced troops, as there's nothing strategic for Ukrainian forces to advance too. The only forces of strategic concern are the North and South salients West of the river, and it seems these forces are the most professional and well organized (in particular the Southern from coming from Crimea needs to take a lot of ground and key cities on the river if it's going to link up with the North-Western front (which is where defense and counter attacks will be focused to prevent encircling of Kiev which has obvious political consequences), and South-West army seems pretty effective at taking territory, so is presumably the professional offensive maneuver and urban combat battalions with the most experienced commanders--an additional reason for having the experts in the south is the Nuclear reactors on the way).

Now, I'm not saying this was the plan from the start, but seems to me the plan now (and definitely I'm not the only one to point it out, but the Western media seems to keep saying Russia is bogged down due to lack of advance in the East ... and then just casually mentions at the end that ok, south is doing better--maybe the strategy).

In terms of game changing weapons, it seems extremely likely to me that Migs from Poland would just get shot down and not do much (certainly can have a chance of doing some damage before being shot down; but the idea the skies would be safer for Ukrainian pilots than for Russian seems "untenable" to use the word that seems to currently describe that). The reason for the focus on the planes is likely for the simple reason that Ukraine does have the pilots and personnel to put some planes up in the sky.

The real game changing weapons would be a lot of armor. There's a reason that Nato assumed that the Soviet Union could just roll through Europe: a shit ton more armor than Nato had. Turns out that the US wildly overestimated the Soviet capabilities (because they hired a Nazi to run intelligence on the Soviets who realized grossly inflating Soviet capabilities would get him more resources and reason to hire his friends), but the basic principle that only a bunch of armor is actually effective against a bunch of armor at the end of the day is pretty accurate (planes and other things can help, but any large scale offensive or counter offensive maneuver needs a bunch of armor--which is why the conscript mobilization playbook also calls for an insane amount of anti-armor mines everywhere).

Problem with donating these kinds of heavy weapons becomes people need to be trained to use them. So, failing that, Ukraine is basically an infantry force, which can sit in trenches (that will eventually get destroyed by heavy artillery and armor assault) and any maneuvers basically gets everyone killed. Hence, the staying in cities which is basically a system of trenches both above and below the ground.

Obviously, Russia's plan is to simply siege cities and not venture in for the above reason unless strategically necessary.

Of course, things can change overnight and with US intelligence help maybe it's possible to do some surprise super move.

However, if it doesn't happen and Russia simply links up it's forces North South and if that doesn't cause a negotiated peace, it would be a sort of "now what" phase of the war.

Last note, another reason for Russia "going light" at the start of the war is that certainly they can now tell their soldiers that the only people that remain "want to" be there, everyone has had a chance to flee etc.

In terms of the wider military significance, if Russia completes a North-South line West of the river that becomes well dug in and basically immune to any infantry attack and can just sit there indefinitely, it's clearly "won" militarily, even if the war isn't over. For the kind of international relations Russia has, winning through overwhelming force is the advertising they want.

Again, abandoning Afghanistan (which then fell in a few weeks without NATO doing anything) and then cutting Ukraine in half (without NATO being able to stop it) and Russia successfully helping Syria, keeping clients in power in Belarus and Kazakhstan (with quick in and out operation, nothing messy), all sends an important military message: US says their your friend ... think twice if that's true, what's been happening to America's "friends" ... whereas Russia says your their friend, Russia sticks by their friends. CIA threatens to take you out, talk to Assad, he's still there.

For the kind of core international relations Russia has, winning this war (even in a brutal way) is a perfectly good message. If the Kremlins offer is never accepted then the Kremlin can say "they were reasonable, all they wanted was a couple of things" for the rest of history and no one can say otherwise.

So, this would be the alternative situation in Ukraine. Again, it's possible riots are erupting in Russia even now due to sanctions or that multiple fronts are being routed as we speak, but what I describe above is also one possibility.

A short version is that Russia is employing World War II pincer maneuvers all over the place, followed by World War I style trench warfare on the fronts it wants to defend. No doubt they have taken losses, but if they are serious that this is existential for them (granted, in the naked imperialistic sense, not my own anarchist philosophical sense), then accepting losses is a logical extension of that.

Was it possible to do better? The problem with this question is that Ukraine's been financed and helped by US arms and intelligence, so the very cautious approach at the start of the war may have been wariness of any CIA surprise ... like, I don't know, biological research labs, or like, whatever man.

We seem in agreement on the key points.

Certainly Russia doesn't prepare for a US style minimal casualty conflict that it conducted at the start.

In my view, for mostly PR purposes of "easing into conventional warfare"; due to failures in that kind of warfare, even Western talking heads are like "well, Russia's going to have to do better". In some strange way their the underdog in a lot of commentary.

Also easing their own population into the war was certainly a factor.

Now that they are doing what they train for, using their heavy artillery, we'll see if it's effective or not.

Moreover, we need to remember that no US presidents were cancelled for deliberately bombing civilians in Germany and Japan. A balanced debate needs to analyze things in the right perspective, not in isolation of everything else. — Apollodorus

I was going to bring this up too that there was millions of people protesting the war in Iraq before it happened, as it happened, after ... war still happened. Western media seems to suddenly think that criticism of the kind the US gets about wars is a game changer all of a sudden (how many war crimes accusations has the US faced for example). Indeed, in the US voters still tend to pick who they think will best "win" the war.

So you were just pretending to disagree with me about that. Ok. — Olivier5

Disagreeing about what?

Obviously the sanctions have an impact. But, if they won't cause Russian's to rise up nor affect the Kremlin's war policy, they are irrelevant in ending the war at hand.

Now, if you're talking long term economic impact, it easily can increase Russia's relative economic strength. It is not a foregone conclusion that sanctions will hurt Russia in the long term.

Commodity price increase is good for Russia ... they have nearly all the critical commodities which means they not only make bank on selling those commodities at historic prices, but also they can easily subsidize the consumption of those commodities for their own citizens.

Who commodity price increases isn't good for is Western nations, where key commodity price increases can easily cause inflation and recession and social discontent.

From a geo-political strategic perspective, the West's power is in decline and this war in Ukraine could easily be a brilliant geo-political strategic move (in terms of pure power politics).

The narrative that this is bad for Russia because the Western media doesn't like Putin even more than before, may not be a true narrative and things far more complex than they seem. Yes, the western media disapproves, but, no, Putin can't be cancelled like some "toxic" male executive trying to host Jeopardy .

You guys think Russia will have no economic problem? Really? — Olivier5

Nobody here has said the sanctions and the cost of the war itself don't have immense economic impacts.

wrote a few key points about the economic impacts.

The question about the sanctions and economic impacts are:

1. Will they actually stop the war somehow
2. Will they be effective long term to "punish" or "weaken" Russia
3. Will increase in commodity prices and re-orienting to China / India make a neutral (or even positive) economic outcome for Russia.

True, China will be buying at a discount ... but if the prices are sky high internationally, then selling at a discount may still be far higher profit anyways.

... And, last I checked, the Germans and the entire EU are still buying Russian gas at top Euro.

That's the hard truth for sure.

And, if the West cared so much, could have let Ukraine into NATO and the EU and given them hundreds of billions of Euro's as a friendly gesture in 2014. Nothing at all stopping such deals happening between "sovereign" nations, just a few papers to sign, easy-peasy.

looks increasingly grim on that front (depending on who you are I guess.) — Count Timothy von Icarus

We'll definitely see in the days to come if Kiev is cut off or Ukrainians can hold their lines.

However, as I say, unless Ukrainians can rout the Russian's entire formation, it's just going to stay put and other formations will move up from the south.

The whole purpose of waging a multiple front war is that the enemy can't defend on multiple fronts.

So the whole narrative of "Russia's totally losing because of getting bogged down and setbacks on these fronts ... but, sure, totally winning on third front" doesn't really make sense; that's the entire point of such a strategy. Had Ukrainian army gone and defended Kherson to prevent a breakthrough West of the Dnieper ... maybe Kiev would be surrounded by now.

Since advantage is to the defender, if the enemy focuses on one front you can just defend your current line, and advance on some other front. Moving troops and equipment around is costly and takes time, so there's basically no way to optimally distribute forces on three fronts everyday, as long as Russia pressures Kiev then it's necessary to reinforce there and try to prevent encirclement.

Sarajevo held out for almost four years before the Siege was lifted with limited paths in for supplies. Even before modern food storage methods, cities in antiquity and the middle ages held out for months, sometimes over a year after losing all supply routes in. Hardly an ideal timeframe. Hence the heavy shelling and poorly implemented raids. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Definitely Ukrainians could keep fighting for a long time.

Russian plan seems definitely to just siege cities and basically wait.

As for poorly implemented raids, Russia has taken a lot of territory already, which is accomplished by sending people to take that territory. Insofar as Russia advances everyday ... they'll eventually get to all their objectives.

There's certainly a high short term cost and high risks; but in terms of purely resource based strategy, Ukraine has resources that will easily pay for the war and the long term increases in commodity prices will also pay for the war (to what extent sanctions impact other sectors of Russia economy, and if this is worse than commodity price increases, we could of course debate).

Oil is currently at 130 USD a barrel and natural gas 27 USD/MMBtu, this isn't "bad" for Russia. EU is still paying Russia a billion Euros a day for energy.

The purpose of "holding out" in medieval times had several practical purposes; cities also surrendered all the time to avoid a siege and, in exchange for that favour, negotiate conditions, when there was zero purpose to holding out.

Why completing the siege of Kiev will change things considerably is that Putin is not insisting on taking the city, and if Russian lines (once setup around the city) cannot be practically broken from the outside, pressure will be pretty high to accept Russia's conditions of surrender.

A substantial majority. 84% of households have cards, which are overwhelmingly Visa or MasterCard. 21% have cards using lines of credit. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is is interesting to know, that they do have cards, but only 21% have a line of a credit. If the those other 84% only have a card for online purchases every once and a while it may not affect them all that much. Certainly annoying, but not necessarily suffering.

For as you say, "Visa and MasterCard did this temporarily after the invasion of the Crimean Peninsula," so:

They also have a better alternative in UnionPay than they did in 2014, but it is definitely hitting regular Russians hard in their day to day lives short term. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Meaning it's less impact than when Visa and Mastercard did so the first time. Now, certainly I would agree this is disruptive to regular Russians, but I've been using a scale of impact of disruption, hardship and suffering, which I'll explain more clearly in response to your next comment.

No modern economy is autarkic. 20.6% of Russian GDP goes to imports. By comparison, that figure for the USA is just 14.6%. Exports are 28.5% of the Russian economy; for the US it is 11.7%. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I only mentioned independence in energy and food, as going without these things causes immediate suffering.

I did not intend in anyway to play down the disruptions and hardships caused by these sanctions, only to note Russians won't be cold and hungry, on the whole, anytime soon.

That the sanctions are insanely disruptive I totally accept and for certain not good for the economy, and such disruptions certainly result in real hardships. I don't minimize these things, and I went to some length to argue that this war is only happening now because the Kremlin "sanction proofed" itself "enough" for severe sanctions to not immediately collapse the entire Russian economy and bring about revolution overnight (such as through the banking reform you mention).

Likewise, in terms of longer term, the wider economic impacts only matter if Russia cannot get substitutes from China. Certainly intensely disruptive to change suppliers, but there's a big difference between that and material, components or equipment not being available at all.

Connection to global markets is huge for Russia. China is a major trading partner, but they account for just 14.6% of Russia's exports. The EU makes up over 40% of Russian exports, the US another 4.6%. Gutting 1/7th of your economy (the amount these exports are equivalent too) is going to hurt no matter what you do to prepare. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, not denying the intense disruption and I think your word hurt would be the same as my word hardship. Definitely hurting and hardships of all this economic disruption.

My talking about suffering is that starving and being unable to heat your home, is not merely disruptive or economic hardship, but real suffering, and the West simply cannot inflict this kind of real suffering on Russians through economic sanctions in the short term.

Certainly, sanctions haven't worked so far in sparking some sort of revolution of causing Putin to withdraw his forces, and the purpose of my talking about energy and food is just that there's simply a limit to how much the West can really impact regular Russian lives.

If they think the war is justified a population will easily put up with disruption and hardships and it "brings people together" and is a patriotic experience, just as Ukrainians putting up with disruption, hardship and real suffering of being on the road or under siege. We can't underestimate the Ukrainians population willingness to support continued conflict ... nor too can we underestimate the Russians is my basic point.

However, all the additional facts you bring are certainly completely relevant. The macro economic implications are super big and there's a massive cost to switching suppliers and re-orienting the economy, but seems normal Russians are accepting this, for now at least.

Importantly for a longer term war, China only manufactures 6% of microchips. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course, they can scale up further if there's demand from Russia, but, also, there doesn't seem any way for the West to prevent China just re-selling chips to Russia anyways; they'll certainly complain, but I don't see China accepting being told what to do on this issue.

I highly doubt that. The war is unpopular and costing them heavily. They want a quick war. This flies in the face of all their strategy to date. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't dispute that Kremlin would have preferred a quick victory, and I'd even accept the current situation is a total surprise they didn't really plan for; but considering this has been building for 8 years, I would expect they did consider these sorts of scenarios (they did their sanction proofing and 'more than friends" with China precisely because they were considering this scenario; how likely they thought it was is another question).

But by strategy I mean their plan now, not their original plan.

And this new plan I wouldn't say is some sort of new idea: likely they're thinking is we try going in soft a few days and if Ukraine doesn't give up we'll just do what we always do.

And definitely if Russian people "rise up" then the new plan won't work, and it's also entirely possible we see some big surprise from Ukrainian army and Russia get routed; certainly not impossible, just that if there's some big secret being planned I don't know about it nor see what it could be.

Western intelligence agencies could have plenty of reasons to mislead about the situation on the ground, but so far most of their limited commentary has been borne out. Open source satellite imagery also seems to suggest this is the case. I'm not sure why else you would want to leave your supply convoy clumped together like that. To be sure, Russia surely has adequate AA along the length of the convoy, but even then, a miracle attack getting through is not something you want to risk if you don't have to. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This isn't really any more unusual than putting your equipment anywhere else. Once you have a front line, you need backup equipment behind said front line, and, in term of any air strike or ambush or whatever, stringing out your backup equipment over 30 km is a good thing.

Of course, you can have your equipment even farther back, but then it's not handy when you need it and when you do send it in it may run out of gas; they would certainly prioritize topping up whatever they may actually need.

The alternative to this long ass convoy and just not committing the equipment at all to the area, would be camouflaging all these vehicles under trees and stuff but there doesn't seem to be many trees and they'd all get stuck in the mud, so just staying on the highway and accepting some risk of losses isn't irrational. Of course, if the front line collapses then this entire convoy could be destroyed, but, presumably, Russian commanders are betting that won't happen.

They also seem to be setting up forward operating bases closer to Kiev.

It's also unclear why they wouldn't want to encircle Kiev as quickly as possible. You can hold most of the area around a city, and if supplies can still get through, your seige won't be effective. — Count Timothy von Icarus

They certainly do want to encircle Kiev as quickly as possible, but due to the political consequence of of that (leadership also stuck and suffering) preventing encirclement of Kiev is Ukraine's top priority.

Why gains in the south are extremely rapid and Kherson was taken without prolonged urban combat resistance, is because Ukraine clearly can't fight on all fronts.

Obviously, Russia can eventually simply complete the encirclement of Ukraine by coming up from the south, but that will take time and preventing encirclement of Kiev meanwhile is their main strategy.

Once Kiev is encircled the military, social and political dynamic will completely change.

Russians are going slowly by surely around Kiev, I would guess, precisely because that's where you may get a surprise counter offensive and your forces routed if you're not careful (as you say, no easy way to skedaddle if you have a 30km convoy on the highway, and a tactical retreat to regroup would be an embarrassment anyways).

There's basically two ways to advance in conventional warfare.

What we see in movies is the armor based offensive to break through enemy lines and rout them. This has high reward, but also high risk that your armor gets isolated and destroyed.

The other way is the slow encroachment of infantry (building fortified positions as they go) following heavy artillery bombardment.

This is a really slow process: infantry advance a bit, get shot at, the enemy positions identified and shelled to oblivion until they die or then retreat (small arms purpose is basically to just protect against the sneak attack): infantry advance a bit more and the process repeats.

Of course, with equally matched forces the enemy also has heavy artillery doing the exact same thing to your infantry positions, and the lines quickly get built up until there is basically no practical way for infantry to advance without immediately all dying (WWI); hence, to try to break such a stalemate the armor offensive was developed (the original purpose of the tank was to simply drive over trenches, which was developed after the intuitive and common sense idea of just gassing the enemy to death proved less effective than people expected); the enemy must then fall back to a less fortified position and you can then immediately occupy their trench system as your new fallback point, after chasing them a bunch until they manage to regroup and/or outrun your supply lines.

Reducing buildings to rubble can make urban combat more difficult, but if the Russians are trying to avoid urban combat then it makes sense to shell buildings that are good locations for launching anti-tank rockets and sniper fire. If you hand out small arms to civilians then it's completely logical to do this preemptively than bother to wait for enemy fire from these buildings.

Will of the people to fight, to resist, is in every war essential. — ssu

I don't disagree. Certainly, if they win, it will be a great victory.

However, people have been surrendering since the beginning of warfare, we do not automatically condemn them as cowards.

Indeed, for WWII, we criticize the Japanese and the Germans of "fighting until the bitter end" and simply increasing deaths without any possibility of changing the outcome of the war.

Now, if the Ukrainian leaders have some brilliant plan that would be one thing, and maybe we'll see it.

However, if even Ukrainian leaders see zero way how they will win, military commanders operating with basically zero logistical network to hold positions, etc. then, considering it's not an existential war of literally Genghis Khan going to murder every last woman and child ... indeed, Russia isn't even demanding a change in leadership, then accepting Russia's current terms seems pretty reasonable.

Now that deterrent has failed, motivation in war is crucial. Motivation is important to endure war. And motivation is important to rebuild the country after war. — ssu

I completely agree.

There are many examples where the best technology has been unable to achieve anything while poorly armed defenders with outdated weapons have prevailed in the end. We are seeing it quite clearly for instance in Yemen, where one of the poorest countries one group has destroyed many American Abrams tanks of the Saudis and have captured them intact as the crews have abandoned the vehicles. You didn't see that with American troops. Will to fight is simply important. — ssu

Yes, it is possible that there's some way for Ukrainians to somehow win or then get better terms (... I guess join NATO).

I just don't see exactly how Ukrainians can actually deal with heavy artillery and Russians can simply avoid urban combat.

And, I'm sure you agree that lives should not be thrown away for no reason, they do need to have some real chance of accomplishing the goals you outline.

Ukraine did do two very smart moves. By not only saying that all 18 to 60 year old men have to stay in Ukraine, but that this has been at large obeyed is actually very crucial. I — ssu

It's possible this is a smart move against some existential threat ... it's also possible it's a really dumb move if peace can be achieved by simply recognizing what it can't have anyways (NATO could bring Ukraine in today if it wanted to) and also Russia winning a conventional war anyways.

I have really serious doubts about the effectiveness of untrained civilians to wage the kind of war Russia is waging.

And to just give out weapons the Zelensky government has effectively created the image both to Ukrainians and to the outside world of a unified country and a people ready to defend it. — ssu

It was a good social media move, for sure, definitely galvanized the West.

However, has serious consequences of simply handing out weapons to civilians, not even pretending to conscript them into some sort of formal soldier status and chain of command. It makes Putin's statements of Ukraine using human shields completely true, and also makes any civilian just wandering around with an assault riffle a legitimate target for snipers / mortars / tanks / artillery / rockets / aircraft bombs / helicopter strafing and so on.

Of course this will, as you say, increase the casualty figures, but that does have when nations opt to have for example universal conscription. — ssu

Certainly countries can have conscription, though that is different than handing out weapons to civilians, as discussed a lot already.

For the overall outcome on the war of all these measures, I personally don't see Russia losing.

Their strategy is pretty simple:

1. Keep pressure on all fronts.
2. Advance each day on weakest fronts
3. Avoid urban combat unless necessary
4. Cutoff all supply lines and wait things out
5. Build out their logistics methodically

Once they cut the country in half I don't see any possibility of Ukrainians prevailing, and I don't see anyway Ukraine can stop Russia from simply cutting the country in half. They can just build a trench system North-South and say "you're move".

It's certainly possible some amazing Ukrainian counter offensive, rapid scale-up of effective training and logistical support for all those conscripts and likewise sanctions having the intended affect in Russia.

So, I'm not saying it's impossible, I just don't see, personally, how the current Russian strategy as I understand it could be defeated, and, at least according to Western press, Russians have increased their support for Putin since the war started.

If they take Kiev, either the West escalates even more or it will have to negotiate. — Manuel

Unclear what more the West can really do to escalate; Germany has already clarified it's not going to stop buying Russian natural gas (obviously). And, even if Germany did stop buying Russian gas ... they'll just start buying again after the war. Russia has gold and currency reserves and commodities to sell to China, India ... Germany.

Sanctions are disruptive to normal Russians ... but even then not necessarily even normal Russians.

For instance, Visa and MasterCard pulled out of Russia, but how many normal Russians even have a credit card to begin with?

Russia is self sufficient in terms of food and energy, so actually making normal Russians suffer economically is likely impossible to achieve through sanctions.

Upper middle class and rich Russians have their lives disrupted, for sure, but don't necessarily "suffer".

Plans to send war planes to Ukraine from the US are spine chilling. — Manuel

I'm not sure how effective these planes are going to be. Russia has plenty of AA defenses and planes of their own.

It's been observed Russia hasn't used much air power ... but you don't really need air power so close to your own borders. The purpose of air power at the end of the day is basically to substitute artillery strikes; which makes sense ... if you don't have any artillery in the area.

If you do have artillery than it would be helicopters that have other uses other than artillery substitute, which we have seen a lot of use of.

I'm pretty sure any plane Ukrainians put up will just be shot down, and certainly Russians are working hard on the counter-drone warfare, and using plenty of drones themselves. The problem with posting everything to social media, is only successes, and not failures, get posted, nor any followup about whether Russian's learned to deal with the tactic.

To be crystal clear, Ukrainian's are more than justified in defending themselves and are doing so very bravely. — Manuel

Certainly are justified. My major criticism of the Ukrainians is arming civilians. Had they kept to professional soldiery, and then lost conventional battles, there would be a lot less civilian deaths and, likely, the exact same chances of successfully defending their country.

It's just hard to say how Russia will interpret such actions - if they are carried out. They obviously simply cannot have a conventional war in Europe, they can't handle Ukraine, so... — Manuel

That's exactly what they are doing now, very conventional warfare tactics to just level everything with artillery wherever they go, lay siege to cities, and (likely in my opinion) just make a trench system North-South cutting the whole country in half, and just wait as long as they need to for Ukrainians to officially surrender.

They are not entitled to a trial in those circumstances, hence "it is one of the few areas where summary execution is allowed." — Count Timothy von Icarus

These aren't really the stories nor videos of these executions.

The stories are "finding" these people, holding them captive, and executing them, not :

If the people involved were actually Russian spies, of they were dressed in civilian clothes or Ukranians military uniforms, and if military forces saw them engaging in sabatoge or combat within the battle space (e.g., actively destroying AA equipment, firing on civilians or soldiers, attempting to disable military vehicles during ongoing shelling / air strikes, etc.), then, legally, you are not correct. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which I have not seen any video nor even any story of someone actually sabotaging anything.

People, whoever they actually are, are just being straight murdered in the streets, but I guess "deputized" civilian soldiers as well as other more formal paramilitary. I would definitely argue these murders are war crimes.

The whole legal framework of "war crimes," isn't relevant in what you're describing. Civilians killing civilians isn't a war crime. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's why I say it can be argued later "it was civilians" all along, to make exactly that point.

However, right now the story is these people are Russian special forces just being executed on the spot without any process whatsoever.

However, if you arm civilians they are no longer quite civilians, and them going around murdering people (is maybe just murder for them, as they aren't really soldiers either) but I would still argue is a war crime of the political leaders that armed them.

And murdering your own citizens in a war is also a war crime.

It's unclear how long Kiev will last, any info on this topic would be appreciated. — Manuel

However, I did see this morning a Western journalist reporting from Kiev that the city is currently being surrounded and the ways out are closing; that the previous day they could go a ways down the road, but now the shelling and fighting is far closer. I was also unsure until seeing this report.

It's somewhat difficult to find accurate info amid this mess. I assume that the reason Kiev is not yet taken has to do with its resistance, but, what whatever happened to that long Russian convoy that was supposed to arrive? — Manuel

Generally speaking, very true that accurate information is sparse, but the major gains are pretty well verified.

Russia's strategy is clearly to simply siege cities and wait them out.

True that Russia would have preferred Ukraine surrender after the first days and taste of war, but their "do it the hard way" is clearly to just shell to the ground suburbs to clear a path to surround cities.

This is a slow process, hence the 30km convoy. I think the narrative that the convoy is stuck is pretty naive, they are just waiting for the front to be setup all around Kiev and also the forces from the East to arrive on that side. It's more just used as a long parking lot.

True, Ukrainian forces could hit it with a lot of air power and drones ... but that's not happening so presumably they don't have the capability.

For this whole executing people thing.

Imagine if there was video of American soldiers just pointing at people, calling them "saboteurs" and executing them on the spot.

The rules don't change just because we think Russians are being executed surreptitiously.

That said, executing spies and sabateurs in civilian clothes or other nations military uniforms is not a war crime. It has always been allowed under both the Hague and Geneva Conventions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Dude, I already addressed this, you still need to have some process and some evidence they are saboteurs.

Just calling someone a saboteur and executing a prisoner of war isn't "a clever hack".

I'm not aware of any treaties where the execution of spies isn't allowed. It's why it's such a dangerous job. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, you'd need some sort of legal process to establish they are spies.

Pointing at someone, calling them a spy, and executing them is a war crime. Since I imagine most of these people are just ethnic Russian Ukrainians that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess it could be argued (later) that no, no, we were just murdering our own citizens based on just your regular guy paranoid vigilantism, nothing to see here.

Now, if they are spies, and they're held as prisoners, and there's some process to establish they're spies and execute them, that's another matter.

However, generally speaking, actual professionals don't execute spies so as to trade them back for your own spies.

Because the Baltic states and Poland, for instance, can now rest assured they can beat the Russians in a conventional war, in case the Russians would feel carried away and try to take over other countries. — Olivier5

They're all in NATO ... Russia has nuclear deterrence.

Unless you can actually stop Russian conventional battalions crossing the country North-South in mostly flat open terrain, then Russia is going to "win". That they didn't win "good enough" isn't going to be a very powerful argument for long, nor is hypothetical losses in scenarios that won't happen.

Nato is a defensive alliance. It has never attacked anyone. — Olivier5

Then why does the comment I was responding to matter?

Sure, NATO could defeat Russia in conventional warfare.

How does that help Ukrainians to know?

Or then why does it matter to Russians if NATO isn't going to attack them as you say? And obviously conventional warfare doesn't matter in that scenario anyways.

That's why they have some thousands of nuclear weapons in the event NATO attacks them.

Russians don't hold themselves to American military standards and just "give up the country" in shame if they aren't able to match a military that spends literally 10 times more.

Russians maybe appreciate their country and free health care the best they can without setting unrealistic expectations.