This war isn't going to end any time soon.

If peace is signed, Ukraine can join NATO. As long as war continues, Ukraine cannot join NATO. At least not officially, according to the NATO charter. They might make an exception, but then again that would put NATO and Russia officially at war, (Art. 5, and all that) which might also not be what the West wants.

Russia has every incentive to let this war drag on.

Putin isn't desperate either. The situation right now is that Russia has annexed roughly 20% of Ukraine. This "Russia is losing the war / Putin is desperate" rhetoric is just a PsyOp. I'll believe it when it happens.

If you set up a top down system with the goal of diverting blame from the leader then that prevents the bottom up feedback that tunes the system to be effective. The system lacks the independent thought and truth telling it needs to function well. — apokrisis

Your assessment seems corroborated by those from within the military too

William J. Astore - military professor U.S. Air Force Academy says...

let me tell you this: honor code or not, you can’t win a war with lies...

... The military has, in fact, developed a narrative that’s proven remarkably effective in insulating it from accountability...

... Senior military leaders have performed poorly...

...there’s been no accountability for failure.

...military leaders wielded metrics and swore they were winning even as those wars circled the drain.

...the military and one administration after another lied to the people about those wars, they also lied to themselves, even though such conflicts produced plenty of internal “papers” that raised serious concerns about lack of progress.

...senior military and civilian leaders realized that war, too, was going poorly almost from the beginning, yet they reported the very opposite

...so much “progress” being made in official reports even as the military was building its own rhetorical coffin

Trouble is, he's talking about the US military...

They're conflict habituated, a sign of deep emotional wounds that probably go back to childhood.

Slantchev presents a solid argument for how Putin might respond to further losses. I think the logic of proportional response to such escalation would not be to wipe out the Black Sea fleet but to isolate Russian forces in Ukrainian spaces.

By annexing the contested territories, Russia has collapsed the line previously drawn constraining the use of offensive weapons to defend Ukraine. If there is any chance in keeping the escalation from going straight to the unfolding of MAD, response needs to be very specific.

But who am I kidding? I feel like Mandrake while he was stealing a Coke from the vending machine.

Don’t believe everything you see in the media. Putin isn’t leaving any time soon. He is going to flood the Donbas and Crimea with as many soldiers as possible. The density of his forces will make future incursions into those territories — especially in the East — very difficult. Putin can escalate the use of force continuum by using more vacuum bombs, cluster bombs, phosphorous, chemical weapons, and the like, but he will not resort to any “tactical nukes” — he simply doesn’t need to, and the potential gains of using that kind of weaponry do not outweight the risks, which includes Russia’s total annihilation. While Putin is surrounded by “yes” men, and has his moments of naiveté, he is still an intelligent operator and knows how far he can push the West and get away with it.

Strategically, we will want to push deeper into the occupied territories as much as possible until resistance becomes too thick to permeate. At this juncture, we will want to dig in, fortify our positions, and effectively establish a new front line while we receive more long range artillery in the meantime. Russia has expended an inordinate amount of artillery during the first 7 months of combat. When I was fighting in Irpin in March, the largest lull in between explosions was counted at only 21 seconds — don’t ask me who determines these figures, but that felt about right. In any case, I believe we can establish superiority of artillery in no more than 1.5 years (provided the incoming stream of NATO-supplied weaponry remains somewhat consistent in number and type). Russia is essentially “blowing its load” and cannot sustain its current pace of artillery bombardments.

Don’t count on Putin being overthrown or the Russian government imploding from the inside. While there are some factors that lend credence to these ideas, there are even more that support the opposite conclusion.

Well, that was a light and refreshing afternoon snack!

Seeing that both the Russians and the European ultra-nationalists are dependent upon the continuance of the integrated economies, the reach for maximum leverage would be a suicide pact rather than a strategy for victory for all involved.

As of typing, the net result summary (through hosts of hand-waving, propaganda, killing bombing ruinage, pseudo-legalities and shams, excuses, what-have-you), Putin has (incrementally) declared 4 more Ukrainian regions parts of Russia, i.e. another (attempted) land grab, marked orange:



Source: Mapping the occupied Ukraine regions Russia is formally annexing (Sep 30, 2022)

"Liberation" of Donbas from Nazis? Ending a NATO "invasion"? :D As usual, goodwill, ethics, truth has given way to ambition, lying, politics. (Science fiction is more entertaining and incurs less suffering.)

President Volodymyr Zelensky has hit back at Russia's annexation moves by seeking accelerated membership of Nato.
That is a marked change from the start of the war, when he announced he would stop pushing for membership of the 30-strong Western defensive alliance because of Nato's concern about confrontation with Russia. He knows, however, that he will have to persuade every member state to agree, and Turkey for one is unlikely to. — What Russian annexation means for Ukraine's regions · Paul Kirby · BBC · Sep 30, 2022

Trouble is, he's talking about the US military... — Isaac

That’s right. This kind of open criticism of the political settings - the choice of wars fought, the size of the established force, etc - is what Russia would need as well.

But we were talking about the competence - the military structure, equipment, logistics, training, morale - of the Russian forces. The operational effectiveness of a system where criticism is suppressed.

Sure. Everyone can point to all the unnecessary wars the US has fought because it ain’t sufficiently politically honest with itself. It is set in imperialist mode in terms of ideology. No argument there.

we were talking about the competence - the military structure, equipment, logistics, training, morale - of the Russian forces. The operational effectiveness of a system where criticism is suppressed. — apokrisis

Slightly different, I agree, but not a difference which automatically then constitute a demonstration of the theory.

Astore is describing a military which is not just insulated at a political level, but at an institutional one.

The difference that's being suggested here is an institutional or systematic one sufficient to explain why a moderately motivated US government has a very efficient fighting force, whereas a highly motivated autocrat is frustrated in his efforts. That's a very substantial difference.

What you've suggested is at best a moderate difference in the degree to which errors are reported up. In Russia, there's significant repression of that, in America slightly less so.

At best you've given a mechanism whereby an imperialist Putin might, despite his intentions, have only achieved a substandard army, but you're far from a compelling argument. Plausible, sure, but hardly a coup de grâce.

If the differences between the US and the Russian military were much, much larger, I might be more swayed, but not as things stand.

Ultimately, I've just got no reason at all to start from the assumption that Putin is a fierce imperialist, so I don't need to find ways to explain events through that narrative. If I start from the assumption that Putin is a greedy opportunist, nothing about the current events doesn't fit.

As the Continental once said: "Pour champagne on me once, shame on you. Pour champagne on me twice, shame on me."

The process of application aside, when Zelensky said that Ukraine is now a 'de facto' member of the alliance, he was pointing to the annexations as Russia invoking Article 5 as already underway. The death of the pretense of a Special Operation means it is no longer clear what lines are not to be crossed. So that does not mean there are no longer such lines, but that they need to be rearticulated by those who support Ukraine.

Here is another map with more detail:

(That pocket in the north of Donetsk Oblast has since been closed.)

Slightly different, I agree, — Isaac

No it’s not. But perhaps you are confusing yourself because you want to critique the US as an imperialist superpower rather than engage with the specific point - which is that the incompetence of the Russian force projection is not because Putin never thought he would need an effective army, but because a rotten system could never have delivered an effective army.

Try comparing the Russian situation to democratic states in general. Let’s remove your emotions about the US from the debate so you can see things more clearly.

You seem to be arguing that Putin didn’t feel he needed a modernised army when he said he did, nor that he felt Nato wasn’t actually a threat, despite always acting like it was.

At best you've given a mechanism whereby an imperialist Putin might, despite his intentions, have only achieved a substandard army, but you're far from a compelling argument. Plausible, sure, but hardly a coup de grâce. — Isaac

So I’ve won the argument but now you want to bicker about the margin of my victory? :grin:

Ultimately, I've just got no reason at all to start from the assumption that Putin is a fierce imperialist, so I don't need to find ways to explain events through that narrative. If I start from the assumption that Putin is a greedy opportunist, nothing about the current events doesn't fit. — Isaac

I’ll just remind you again that my original argument was geopolitical. So it was about the conditions that shaped both Putin’s worldview and Russia’s general historical position on these matters.

The puzzle at the centre of this is then that Putin seems a fierce imperialist and a greedy opportunist in equal measure. Both seem true. And yet the two conflict.

That is my fascination. That is what makes things so unpredictable.

Has he changed? Did he start out wanting to make Russia great again but then get corrupted by the very system of power he was forced to construct? What are the actual war aims of his special military operation? How could they rationally fit either monotonic reading of Putin’s mind.

I agree I started out with the Peter Zeihan type analysis of the need for defendable borders and the pressure of imminent demographic decline. Then Vlad Vexler makes it clearer that Russia always hurtles without clarity and so Putin being trapped into his own escalation game becomes the psychology at work.

It’s like if you are Jeff Bezos, why keep piling up more money? If you are Rupert Murdoch, why keep building up more political sway? If you are Trump, why keep stirring up even more shit?

Escalation becomes its own structural logic. We see it everywhere in the world. Folk are trapped in cages of their own making. They start out being successful in the terms the world has given them, but then get locked into that mode of success long past any apparent true purpose.

Bezos, Murdoch and Trump all spring to mind as stark failures of the values of democratic societies. They are growth stories turned cancerous. And yet one can’t believe they are happy in their achievements. Being trapped in an escalation machine seems a human tragedy. The fairground ride that never stops.

So when it comes to analysing the Ukraine crisis, I don’t claim anything is clear. But it feels like Putin must have built his escalation machine out of the mix of inchoate historical imperialist angst and the more modern turn of the Russian state into a self-perpetuating kleptocracy dependent on its skills in information autocracy.

He had to invade Ukraine just to show forward purpose. He had to throw an incompetent, ill prepared, and underpowered force into this endeavour. Plan B is doubling down and hoping the general chaos means that at least everyone loses.

It is all very irrational even if it begins as something rational. Just as in the same way that cancer is biology escaping the constraints of its own immune system.

I'm not sure where the idea comes from that the Russian army is in such a poor condition.

The Russian army went on the offensive against a (roughly) peer adversary while numerically disadvantaged - that's a military feat in and of itself. It managed to defeat the Ukrainian army in the first part of the war (a blow from which the Ukrainians have since recovered) and take substantial parts of Ukraine, which, based on the troops deployed, likely coincided with their initial wargoals.

Obviously this came at a cost, but war is a messy business. The Russians went up against a properly trained and equipped Ukrainian military. Things go wrong as they are inherent to in war, but militaries don't blunder their way into occupying 20% of a large country like Ukraine.

The only real blunder I have seen from the Russian military is the sinking of the Moskva. That seems like an intelligence failure to me.


Also, the idea that the matter of Ukraine is some personal project of Putin's I believe is outright rejected due to the fact that Ukraine has been a hot topic since the collapse of the USSR. Ukraine is of incredible strategic importance for the Russians, and they have consistently made clear the sensitivity of this region over the past decades. Ukraine is by far the most important region to Russia, outside of Russia proper.

When I was fighting in Irpin in March — Wolfman

Are you the first person here to legitimately have some insight into the Ukraine crisis?

The Russian army went on the offensive against a (roughly) peer adversary while numerically disadvantaged - that's a military feat in and of itself. It managed to defeat the Ukrainian army in the first part of the war (a blow from which the Ukrainians have since recovered) and take substantial parts of Ukraine, which, based on the troops deployed, likely coincided with their initial wargoals. — Tzeentch

Meanwhile back on planet Earth….

"The poor performance of Russia's armed forces during its invasion of Ukraine has been costly for Russia's military leadership, highly likely resulting in the dismissal of at least six Russian commanders since the start of hostilities in February 2022," the Defence Ministry said in a Sunday tweet.

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-lost-fired-generals-since-ukraine-war-uk-intelligence-2022-8

cracks began to appear in the Russian army almost immediately. Ukraine’s air capabilities, Russia’s first and most important target, survived the initial onslaught. Russia’s VDV, famed paratroopers, were dropped without support into heavily defended positions. They were sacrificed so recklessly that some wondered if Putin was purging their ranks. By land, Russian invaders raced towards their objective. Instead of destroying resistance, they often bypassed it. This resulted in their logistical support (convoys transporting fuel, food, and ammunition) being ambushed. Russian tanks ground to a halt, now useless, and Russian soldiers began looting food as they faced starvation. Russia’s military was depending on unsecured radio frequencies. Ukrainian intelligence could listen to or jam these communications at will, and civilians began broadcasting taunts directly to Russian soldiers. The invasion date of 22/02/22 appeared to have been chosen because it was a memorable number rather than for a practical reason — Ukraine’s fields had recently turned from ice to mud, restricting vehicles to predictable road routes.

https://thinkmagazine.mt/the-terror-and-incompetence-of-russias-warfare/

Etc, etc.

You could link a hundred articles saying that the Russian military is terrible. Media have produced nothing but propaganda on this subject, so I don't know why you would rely on those to support your opinions.

The fact is that, for the time being, they're occupying 20% of Ukraine, and they did so while at a numerical disadvantage against a well-trained adversary.

I guess the US-trained Ukrainian military must be pretty poor aswell, letting a foreign military blunder their way into occupying their country, then?

The Russian army is extremely competent at killing civilians. You can't take that away from them.

perhaps you are confusing yourself because you want to critique the US as an imperialist superpower rather than engage with the specific point — apokrisis

Is a psychological analysis of the factors clouding our judgments really a route you want to go down? Happy to, but it cuts both ways.

You seem to be arguing that Putin didn’t feel he needed a modernised army when he said he did, nor that he felt Nato wasn’t actually a threat, despite always acting like it was. — apokrisis

You seem to be arguing that the Ukraine invasion wasn't just a 'special operation' when he said it was. Come on! Since when have the things politicians say in their propaganda been indicators of anything other than what their advisors think the populace would want to hear?

So I’ve won the argument but now you want to bicker about the margin of my victory? — apokrisis

You know the difference between plausible and compelling, right? I've never argued that the opposing view to mine is not plausible, I'm not even interested in convincing you otherwise. I'm exploring the extent to which all other narratives are framed (as you have just done) as being ideologically motivated, or apologist, or just plain stupid... To justify those framings, your argument must be compelling (and pretty strongly so), merely plausible is not enough.

The puzzle at the centre of this is then that Putin seems a fierce imperialist — apokrisis

This is the part I've found no reason yet to believe. What is it about events you find difficult to view through the frame of a greedy opportunist? What of Putin's actions to date have not fitted that narrative (assuming the man is not infallible and so capable of mistakes)?

Folk are trapped in cages of their own making. They start out being successful in the terms the world has given them, but then get locked into that mode of success long past any apparent true purpose. — apokrisis

Now this is good, far closer to the sort of psychology I would assign to him (to almost anyone, in fact). We play out roles in stories rather than take well-planned steps logically directed toward rational goals. But the debate is around the extent to which 'fierce imperialist' is even part of Putin's story. I see him much more as a Bezos or a Murdoch, than a Kaiser or Tzar.

You could link a hundred articles saying that the Russian military is terrible. — Tzeentch

Sure could. Can you link to even one that argues the opposite in convincing fashion?

I'm not sure where the idea comes from that the Russian army is in such a poor condition. — Tzeentch

No, neither am I, but I don't have any trustworthy expert views either way, so the only way forward, it seems is to argue the hypothetical - if Russia's armies were in poor conditions, how would that fit the narrative of a powerful leader bent on imperial expansion?

Ukraine is of incredible strategic importance for the Russians, and they have consistently made clear the sensitivity of this region over the past decades. Ukraine is by far the most important region to Russia, outside of Russia proper. — Tzeentch

Exactly. I find the idea that we need some jingoistic explanation for why Russia invaded one of the most economically and strategically important areas in the region, frankly ridiculous. The question of whether Putin has some nationalistic (as opposed to self-centred) ideology is moot, but the idea that events can't rationally be explained without it is crazy. A mid-level bureaucrat in the foreign office would point to the four or five contested regions of Ukraine as strategic targets, it doesn't require a passion for the glory of Russia.

Lol yeah, I think so

https://ibb.co/jG1p33G
https://ibb.co/Z1dVsbW
https://ibb.co/tLpzRM6
https://ibb.co/VT0cDpm

“Young man.” I’m 36. Ha.

Can you link to even one that argues the opposite in convincing fashion? — apokrisis

Why would I want to? Attempts at making such assessments properly are foolish at this point, and I wouldn't take them seriously unless they're backed up by serious research. None of your articles are, probably because such research does not exist. They're based on anecdotes, small snippets of information, etc. that are framed to fit a certain narrative - propaganda, in other words.

Furthermore, facts that can be checked by anyone speak to the contrary.

- 20% of Ukraine is occupied by Russian forces.
- The Ukrainian military was properly trained and equipped by the United States.
- The Ukrainian military outnumbered the Russian military at the start of the invasion (even though most military doctrine prescribes at least a 3:1 numerical advantage to the attacker for offensive operations).
- etc.

Do your articles mention any of this?

Go back in time a little; see what western authors thought about Russia's prospects in a war against Ukraine prior to the invasion. Many thought Ukraine would stand no chance. Another poster in this thread linked an article that claimed Kiev would fall in a matter of hours!

So what these authors are really criticizing here is not the Russian military, but their own false conceptions of the Russian military. They're just trying to write it off as a Russian blunder, instead of their own.

But the debate is around the extent to which 'fierce imperialist' is even part of Putin's story. — Isaac

Again, fierce imperialist was your terminology and not mine. I entered the debate disputing some dumb comments about Putin only making a feint at Kyiv, having goals limited to a chunk of ethniic borderland, and having no desire to continue on if it had won quick success in Ukraine.

And then apart from the geopolitical logic of wanting defensible borders - the driver of territorial expansion - there is Putin’s more general existential driver of a war against US ideological hegemony. It is a battle for psychological Lebensraum. Letting Russia be Russia - even if that now means his greedy and opportunistic, corrupt and incompetent, kleptocracy I guess.

There again is the puzzle. Sure one can understand how oppressed he feels by US hegemony. But to push things as far as a war with a real chance of turning nuclear and creating Europe-wide disaster?

And does it make any more sense seen the other way as a domestic necessity to prop up his own regime and expand his wealth? If Putin had sat tight and continued his low grade trouble making, would anyone have tried to topple him or sanction him? The US had already pivoted to China. Ukraine could have been undermined in the usual sly ways without crystallising sides with an overt war.

If you then listen to Putin’s speeches, what comes through is the sense of humiliation and resentment. Something China also shares. Empires that feel it is their historical right to be empires, and also with bitter memories of how those empires kept getting formed and then broken up by outsiders.

So is Putin just touchy? And believe he is indeed the embodiment of Russia and carries that responsibility? So all this is an emotional reaction seeking its reasons?

That is why I like the idea that Putin is a psychological phenomenon just like a Trump or any other leader who concocts a cult of self that becomes the state’s organisational principle with its own ever escalating logic.

What starts off as private calculation harnessing public emotions becomes the structure of power itself. Putin’s choices are constrained by the logic of his own propaganda. He ends up the puppet of his own reality framing.

To risk so much for so little is ridiculous. Putin’s apologists must pretend he had limited goals, his regime is competent, the West is far more invidious than people realise.

But here we are anyway. And there is still a need for an accurate assessment to predict how this continues of unfold.

Why would I want to? — Tzeentch

To show that you could?

So what these authors are really criticizing here is not the Russian military, but their own false conceptions of the Russian military. — Tzeentch

This is also true.

But on the surprising incompetence side, we have systemic corruption, a historic undervaluing of logistics, a lack of NCO structure, no routine cross force training, a lack of communication gear, a lack of training hours, low morale and lack of mission preparation, plus umpteen other inadequacies that became apparent as your “small but perfectly formed fighting force” breezed through already half occupied Donbas and started to encounter headwinds.

Plan B became liberate Ukraine by levelling it with artillery. Plan C is truck in the raw conscripts and perhaps start setting nuclear power plants on fire or lobbing a few tactical nukes.

If all this is your definition of competence then … OK.

But on the surprising incompetence side, we have systemic corruption, a historic undervaluing of logistics, a lack of NCO structure, no routine cross force training, a lack of communication gear, a lack of training hours, low morale and lack of mission preparation, plus umpteen other inadequacies that became apparent ... — apokrisis

A lot of claims, but what verifiable data are they based on?

The nature of war is messy - Clausewitz called it friction. In giant operations like these things go wrong, and they go wrong all the time. Logistical congestion is the norm rather than the exception - in a situation where both sides are trying to kill and hamper each other there is never enough ammunition, fuel, troops, fire support, etc. You can't predict an enemy whose primary concern is to be unpredictable, etc.

The question is, when you say incompetence what are you comparing it to?

...your “small but perfectly formed fighting force” ... — apokrisis

"My" perfectly formed fighting force?

This seems the go-to response whenever someone in this thread is faced with a conflicting view - start framing them as partisan.

The Russian forces are not "my" forces, nor do I view them as perfect - far from it. I suggest you stick to my actual words and stay away from this type of copium.

The only real blunder I have seen from the Russian military is the sinking of the Moskva. — Tzeentch

Not the failed attempt of quickly reaching the capital?

The Russians’ armored columns were not dispersed and spread out across a massive plain, as in the World War II during the largest tank battle in history at the Battle of Kursk (500 east of Kyiv). In hindsight the Russian desire for need for offensive speed and mass, vs dispersed security and maneuver, was a poor strategy. Instead, these massive, armored columns were attacking in formation on multiple lane highways in convoys that were up to 40 miles long. Javelins fired from up to a mile away with precision accuracy, completely destroying the first tanks or BMPs could stall the whole column. Then pre-sighted artillery claimed the majority of Russian casualties. For several days the 40-mile armored column north of Kyiv was stalled after sustaining massive casualties.

Or not the "special military operation" having to resort mobilization of reservists after a successful Ukrainian counter attack? If I recall, Putin was first saying that conscripts wouldn't be used in the operation. :smirk:

Putin annexes territory, from where he is retreating from...

Not the failed attempt of quickly reaching the capital? — ssu

We've already been over that, and we've also established that the author you put forward ended up supporting my argument and not yours.

But it seems a quick reminder of what your author wrote is in order:

Kiev has almost 3 million inhabitants, Kharkiv has roughly 1.5 million, Odessa has 1 million, Dnipro has almost 1 million, Zaporizhia has 750,000, and even Mariupol has almost 500,000.If defended, these large urban areas could take considerable time and casualties to clear and occupy.

Therefore, the best course of action for Russian troops would be to bypass urban areas and mop them up later.

Kiev poses a similar challenge and, as the nation’s capital, possesses great symbolic value for whichever side holds it.

Source: Russia's Possible Invasion of Ukraine

In summary, Seth G. Jones, an author whose opinions you purport to value greatly, believes the taking of a city like Kiev would be a costly, time-consuming venture, and holds symbolic (and not actual) value.

But I do agree with this: once the defender will defend, then any kind of "Thunder run" into the city is nearly suicidal. Russian's learnt this during the first Chechen war. Yet taking the capital is quite important since the times of Clausewitz.

However quickly they noticed the mistake, to assume in the first place such an attack was a real blunder. It's quite clear that this quick strike into the heart of Ukraine was attempted. The heliborne landings in Hostomel Airport just next to Kyiv show the intent what Russians had.

The heliborne landings in Hostomel Airport just next to Kyiv show the intent what Russians had. — ssu

It seems to me taking out airports would be a key strategic goal regardless of their intentions.

It seems to me taking out airports would be a key strategic goal regardless of their intentions. — Tzeentch

Not with landing paratroops on them. This was classic way to use paratroop landings to ease the attack towards the capital.

Do notice the location of Hostomel airport: