To remind people of what an actual coup attempt looks like:

↪frank I always try to give the benefit of the doubt. — Jabberwock

Well, give it a go.

Why would the entire Russian military and intelligence structure of Russia tolerate Prigozhin criticising them for months and months, "embarrassing them", lowering troop and citizen moral, and so on? Why would Putin tolerate it? Why would Russian intelligence (that has plenty control over the internet in Russia) allow Prigozhin to just post his dissenting videos completely impromptu?

How does Prigozhin do his "march for peace" for 800km without running into any road blocks or obstacles of any kind. Why would Prigozhin the "mutineer" be safe in Belarus and accept such a deal in order to get away with the fruits of extorting and embarrassing the Kremlin, the military, the intelligence structures?

You really think Prigozhin is just this powerful? Allowed to amass this unchecked power ... that's 100% dependent on the Russian military structure for ammo and supplies?

You really think the best explanation is that Prigozhin has just massive balls and (at least expects) to just waltz out of Russia into Belarus carrying his sacks of gold under his massive nuts?

↪boethius So either we go with what we know, and the known loss/gain ratio practically excludes the 'staged coup' scenario, or we assume we know almost nothing and have to refrain from conclusions. — Jabberwock

There's plenty of benefits we can analyse.

My point about benefits we are too unsophisticated to even know is in the context of people think Russian intelligence plaid a vital roll in getting Trump elected. If you ascribe that much power to Russian intelligence they are literally capable of anything. Literally anything happening in the entire world could be Russian intelligence.

However, I don't ascribe to that theory, so, yes, I would agree with you that we should be able to make some sense of things if its staged.

The basic benefit of whole Prigozhin thing is just getting your message in the Western news to begin with. Prigozhin sorts of "hacks into" the Western narrative machine. Of course, how is that possible? It's only possibly by telling things the Western media wants to hear. It's quite extraordinary, a Russian military commander (or whatever you want to call Prigozhin) starts to be basically a trusted source of what is happening on the front line.

If you want your enemy to believe something false for either tactical or strategic value ... well you just have Prigozhin mix it into his diatribes. For example, if you want your enemy to double down in Bakhmut, have Prigozhin say there's heavy losses and artillery is running out and so on. The consequences of a single false belief can be quite extensive and costly.

Likewise, want to frustrate the Ukrainian-Neocon narrative to get Ukraine more heavy weapons, maybe stage a coup and seem weak.

For, one asymmetry in this war is that Russia does not need to import any weapons, but Ukraine does, and (as has been demonstrated since the war started) actually getting heavy weapons into Ukraine can be a long and complicated diplomatic process.

To put things in context, the current top headlines on CNN are:

- Putin claims Russia would have put down 'armed rebellion'
- Russia President Addresses nation and warns against 'internal mutiny' in wake of Wagner insurrection
- Wagner boss calls march on Moscow 'protest' and not attempt to overthrow Putin
- Analysis: Yevegeny Prigozhin over-reached and lost
- Analysis: The West must now consider possibility of a Russian political collapse
- Purin power threatened: John Bolton advises not to 'underestimate' Putin
- Analysis: Despite an abrupt about-face, Prigozhin deeply humiliated Kremlin
- The next shoe to drop in Russia
- China throws support behind 'strategic partner' Russia
- Biden says the US and its allies had nothing to with Wagner's rebellion

Now, why Putin et. al. would want these kinds of headlines is to skip over the basic advantages of taking the initiative in forming headlines. Putin is in the news and the whole world wants to know what he has to say about these recent events, and who's not in the news: Zelensky asking for more weapons, or Graham and Blumenthal talking about their resolution to put Ukraine under the US nuclear umbrella, nor celebration or rationalisation of Ukraine taking a few villages in their offensive, nor any events in Ukraine at all.

You can see how 'relieved and comforted' people are on Russian TV... On Solovyov's show Bezrukov is complaining about the weak and impotent government. 'This couldn't happen in a strong country!' he says (on Solovyov's!). Margarita just looks stunned... Half of milbloggers are calling for blood... On RIA's forums very few people are 'comforted', most are frightened and confused. The most often asked question is: why nobody seeks to punish someone who shot down a dozen of Russian airmen? — Jabberwock

For sure it will remain confusing. However, the fright will dissipate with everything going back to normal/

But for any normal person, they will definitely be relieved and comforted by the coup ending suddenly. One day it's the return to the 90s, tanks gonna be firing at government buildings and so on, bracing for total chaos, collapse of government, and a civil war in Russia ... but also nothing makes sense and it's not a coup and a march for peace, and then the next day it's just completely over, "settled", bloodless.

I would say that both Prigozhin and Putin lost much too much for it to be staged. — Jabberwock

As I mentioned, you need to give to get. Coup has to be "sold".

Reasons the negatives can be mitigated are, for instance, confidence in victory on the battlefield.

However, the costs only make sense to consider in the context of the benefits.

The whole Western media is now talking about this coup and how weak Putin and Russia is ... what they aren't talking about anymore is the imminent nuclear attack in Ukraine by Russia nor needing to get more heavy weapons to Ukraine as Russian resistance has been "fierce". Zelensky is out of the news, and all we're talking about is Russian internal politics and how bad a Russian civil war could get.

However, it's difficult to complete such an analysis because we don't have all the secret information available to intelligence agencies. Maybe this was a high stakes reaction to information of some other intelligence agency engaging in some high stakes action (which may or may not be actually true), such as pre-blaming Russia for a nuclear attack and then going and spreading some nuclear material and blaming it on Russia.

Or, then just classic mad man theory as well as classic controlled opposition.

And my basic point is not to "prove" it was staged, just that it's certainly possible (and possible for reasons we may not have any information access about), but most of all, a group that ascribes enough elaborate propaganda power to Russia as to fix elections in the United States should certainly conclude from that belief that pretty much anything happening in Russia could be some sophisticated propaganda plot.

That's the point I want to emphasise the most, the belief that Russian intelligence can significantly influence US elections through US technology companies under US government regulation and NSA supervision is not compatible with the complete denial Russian intelligence can't come up with this whole Prigozhin character arch for reasons we may even be too unsophisticated to even imagine. If Russia can control events, and perception of events, in the US, they certainly can do it even better in Russia.

And this criticism is mainly towards Western media that harped on about Russia influencing US elections for years, compromat on Trump etc. and then turn around and take all these antics (since months and months and months) by Prigozhin at face value.

Well kudos for that! It did all look theatrical at times for sure, but shooting your own helicopters down is a bit extravagant unless Prigozhin suddenly turns up in the West telling stories to intelligence agencies or some such. Or am I missing something? — unenlightened

Well, first of all, maybe it is just a shit show. My main point is that people who say masterful Russian propaganda methods exercised through the West's own technology platforms under NSA surveillance got Trump elected should certainly at least consider the possibility these events as staged for propaganda purposes.

Not that I'm saying you personally say Russia got Trump elected, or even played a contributing roll (rather than the 2 billion of free airtime the Western media provided Trump), just that my basic point is in that context.

That being said, if it is staged the critical problem is selling it to Western media. You need to give to get. Prigozhin needs to "go the distance", at least shit talking wise, so that this is reported as a full blown coup, rather than Prigozhin just clowning around and looking stupid. Response of Western media could be ... yeah ... right, I'll believe it when there's actual fighting going on.

So, how do you sell it? Talk is cheap, so you first would want to say things that really seem "coup like", such as Ukraine never intended to attack Russia, the generals are traitors etc. ... of course you don't want to trigger an actual coup, so you also say you 100% support the elected president and you're not even doing a coup but just a "march for peace".

Then, yeah, maybe down a few helicopters. Did this even happen? Who knows. And if it did happen, could also just be staged as helicopters can be remotely controlled, shot down, or then fire fake missiles (i.e. missiles without warheads) and then set off a harmless fireworks from the helicopter and "go down". All this is happening inside Russia, so events can be 100% controlled. However, I haven't even seen any footage of these alleged helicopter engagements.

The video that supposedly proves Wagner came under attack is just a camera jogging through a forest, no sounds of battle whatsoever, with a guy just saying they came under attack.

Now, they keep on saying the "mutiny" was bloodless ... so at least the Russian narrative is no one died at all. So that doesn't even seem compatible with helicopters being downed, or then the pilots weren't harmed. The Russian narrative doesn't even make any sense on this point.

However, the whole point of an operation like this, if it's staged, is that it's so zany that it's impossible to tell. Sure, zany shit happens all the time. Take Trump's run for president, or Hunter Biden's laptop or then the character arch of Saddam Hussein. Really crazy shit does happen that genuinely doesn't seem scripted and is just driven by zany characters doing wild shit. Maybe Prigozhin's Russia's version of Trump and Ye, just 100% riffing it all the time.

What is the truth when it comes to the cloak and dagger doings of intelligence agencies and their associates, I view as best to keep an open mind, maybe it will become clear later or never. But as a matter of principle, I feel it's wise to assume people's who's job is to deceive you ... may actually succeed in doing so from time to time.

Yes and you predicted all that, obviously. But kept silent to better enjoy the exquisite irony right? Now the explanation pls. Everything must be connected to land bridges, right? — neomac

Team reality did predict it:

However, what could actually be staged is Prigozhin's midnight comedy blowout theatre show, and when I point that out suddenly the idea Russia has some propaganda tricks up their sleeve is ludicrous and certainly the Russians couldn't put together a simple plan of telling the enemy what they want to hear so that their own propaganda networks seed your message for you and your enemy basically "trusts" one of your commanders and take everything he says at face value.

And if that's not the case, why is he still alive?

Nothing easier than arranging an "accident" in a war zone. When it started, maybe he had gone rogue or something, but it's been going on for months so at some point it's difficult to interpret people's actions that are on the same team as something other than team work. — boethius

And I was in the middle of doing some basic research, writing up an analysis of why this latest chapter may too be staged ... take a break, and I wake up and the coup has ended ...

Why we would have reason to believe it was staged, is:

First, Prigozhin is very clear what he is doing is not a coup and the elected president is great ... so this is literally the first coup in history against subordinates of the head of government. So what could possibly be the plan if it's not staged? "March of freedom" to Moscow and then somehow get the Ministry of Defence job and run the war.

Second, the "coup" started literally 1000 km from Moscow. Rule number #1 of couping is get things done fast, "fait accomplie" as soon as possible and immediately seize both the key people and symbols of power. If this was some actual coup attempt, a part of his men would have sprung into action in Moscow, then heavy weapons

Third, Prigozhin has bee continuously criticising the whole officer corp, especially all the top brass, of Russia for months now, he's not in command of any significant number of troops (required for a coup) nor had any backing from any actual high ranking officer. There is literally zero conditions required to successfully stage a coup ... which Prigozhin is clear he's not even doing.

Fourth, Prigozhin only ever talks shit when Russia is winning and troops will be in high moral. Things escalated the last weeks of Bakhmut when it was certainly a foregone conclusion that Ukraine could not possibly hold on to a dozen or so buildings. So, whatever moral downer Prigozhin shit talking may actually caused, is more than compensated by actual victory on the battlefield in taking Bakhmut. It is the perfect timing for some venting of genuine negative emotions that citizens can then project onto Prigozhin: True patriot and son of Mother Russia. Likewise, this "coup" only happens after Ukraine publicly pauses their offensive, and no first day or then during the offensive where this sort of shit disturbing would provide maximum leverage or then (if a genuine coup) a minimum of Russian troops could be diverted to confront him (as the front lines must be adequately manned to prevent a Ukrainian breakthrough, and, moreover, a "coup" in Russia may supercharge the assaults).

So what is he doing. The narrative now is that it was indeed a show, but to simply negotiate more money. Now, it would in principle be possible (but highly unlikely) for going rogue to be a negotiation tactic. I'm going to skip over all the numerous reasons why that really does not seem to be the case, to get to the main one which is that the resolution is Prigozhin going to Belarus, which means absolutely nothing in terms of Prigozhin personal security. Now, if Prigozhin attained free passage to some actual neutral country that guaranteed his safety, like UAE or something, a place that was not a vassal state to Russia, where it would cause a diplomatic incident for Russia to be killing people there, and he could live with some plausible basis to believe he could enjoy his millions and millions, or even billions, he's cashed away so far and then extorted even more out of Russia with his little stunt, ok, that would be one thing. But he's literally going next door to Russia to a country with hundred thousand or more Russian troops where the leader of said country is literally a Russian Colonel somehow.

So, if it's not staged, then Prigozhin literally agreed to go somewhere where he would be killed, giving up all his leverage ... to be immediately killed as soon as he gets to Belarus or even along the way. He could be killed and then just never spoken of again, Belarus doesn't ever investigate and just never talks about him again.

The only rational situation where Prigozhin would do this sort of stunt is if he believed he was about to be assassinated anyways and he had nothing to lose, but in that case he'd negotiate leaving Russia's sphere of influence ... not accept just hopping over to Belarus and calling it square.

It's absolutely ridiculous as some sort of genuine rational plan on Prigozhin's part. There's also zero reason to believe he was about to be assassinated. He took Bakhmut, then was chilling in the rear, the worst (for him) that was being discussed is just the Russian MoD taking more control of Wagner. If Prigozhin talking shit and posting it to the internet was a problem, he would have been killed months ago in an "artillery strike - hero of the father land".

Now, I'm not saying things can't get so fucked up that this sort of fake coup happens by genuine surprise in some high stakes everyone is extorting everyone shit show.

However, a group of people that tie nearly everything they don't like happening in the media to "Soviet propaganda" should definitely be considering this as one case that may actually be this Soviet "nothing makes sense, everything is true and false" legendary propaganda move.

For the most part, these allegations of Soviet propaganda prowess bringing Trump to power through a network of international Marxist (who no one can name as working on behalf of the Soviet Union) and normalising gay and trans identity to break down the family unit and erode the military ethos and so on, is completely insane.

However, this whole Prigozhin saga is literally exactly what these alleged propaganda techniques would look like if they were to be actually used.

To what purpose?

Certainly there are costs of Prigozhin's shit talking ... but even then it's a controlled outlet of people's real emotions, so that's literally not even Soviet but simply standard propaganda methodology.

As for the benefits, to make a long story short, Prigozhin's antics are basically best described as "narrative spiking". You have Western spin doctors carefully crafting their cool aid, and everyone in the West (well, at least main stream media) is just standing around drinking it pleasantly, everything it good, everything is fine. Then, Prigozhin rides into the party on a Harley Davidson and a leather jacket and cracks two bottles of vodka and just drops them right into the cool aid like he doesn't even care. Suddenly everyone is getting drunk Prigozhin sauce, the calm and orderly party, more of a get together really, turns into a rowdy frat blowout with people losing their fucking minds about some coup happening or some shit. Everyone is suddenly a giddy Joe Rogan rambling on about their pet theories, as deep into things without having the slightest clue of what you're talking about as you can possibly get.

Why would you want to do this?

It's the only way for Russia to impact Western narrative and disrupt the medicine of the Western spin doctors. A "coup" in Russia was obviously not part of any plan in the West and it's then really difficult to blend back in these events into whatever the next version of reality and talking points are supposed to be.

To make matters worse, since these unexpected events in some ways go along with parts of the Western narrative (that Russia governance is incompetent and about to collapse ... any day now) all the foot soldiers of the Western narrative machine roll with it. These people still have jobs of reporting the news, and this is clearly news worthy and they are forced to report on things without there being time for a narrative consensus of the people who matter to be formed. Certainly sounds good to present things as a real coup in Russia and Putin is weak and so on, so Western journalists need to say something and so extend the existing narrative in a logical way to include these events.

Measures are certainly extreme, but this coup happens literally the day after both Ukraine and senators in the US rapidly escalate the talk of nuclear events in Ukraine and Nuclear retaliation for any nuclear events in Ukraine, that would obviously be Russia's doing by definition.

If you're Putin or anyone in Russian governance, intelligence or the military planning ... this is really alarming talk, by a side that just made a movie trailer for an offensive that has not made any gains remotely close to "cutting the land bridge", and arguably no actual gains at all.

... So, what's even more newsworthy than all this nuclear talk and would disrupt any actual plan, political or operational, nuke wise? A literal coup in Russia might do the trick. Basically throwing out a wild card in a tricky situation to at least disrupt your opponents plans.

Whether Russian analysts and decision makers were genuinely concerned of this nuclear narrative or not, or viewed it as sabre rattling, I don't know, but it's certainly something people would pay attention to.

However, there's also other benefits for such an event and reasons to stage it. Ukrainians and the West just went on an emotional rollercoaster of all their dreams suddenly coming true and then ... nada. Likewise, ordinary Russians were just faced with the anxiety and abyss of real chaos and then immediately relieved and comforted with the warm cloak of order and familiarity.

Which is literally the exact definition of this mythical Soviet propaganda system, which as an explainer for the entire liberal progressive movement has scant evidence, nor does it seem even possible for Soviet agents to be orchestrating the "left" since several decades right under the Western intelligence and media system's nose, but if you take this Soviet propaganda hypothesis and actually lay it out and ask what would fit this methodology, this whole Prigozhin saga is an exact match and clearly feasible and with direct communication between Prigozhin and Putin and Putin and everyone else of importance, there is clearly the organisational opportunity to pull it off, the scope is limited enough to be some actual feasible plan, "no blood was spilled".

After all, it started in 2014. — ssu

The war has not been so intense since 2014.

That there was 8 years of a low intensity civil war "supported" by Russia is not any basis to say the current intensity of warfare can last 8 years.

At some point things will start to fall apart, and it's difficult to bet against the far larger and stronger side with far more kinds of capabilities.

Probably why talk of a "frozen conflict" has ramped up in the West, the alternative to one side winning or a negotiated settlement is just each side being unable to carry out large offensives and things just stay like that.

However, I'm unsure if this would even be stable in this case, mainly due to the drones allowing attritional warfare to continue at great distances. This is very much a new thing in the history of warfare and may prevent a large no-mans land forming which each side hesitates to cross and firing artillery randomly back and forth is basically guess work and mainly just a reminder of what would happen if large infantry formations did enter no mans land.

Actually the Russians were in the same situation as the Ukrainians just few months ago. And that Winter Counteroffensive was forgotten as it didn't go anywhere. Likely what will happen with the Ukrainian counteroffensive is that it will take time. Both sides have their limitations. — ssu

This is exactly my thesis: that Ukraine offensives have the same problems as Russian offensives ... just worse as they have less capabilities (less planes, less helicopters, less air defence, less tanks and so on).

Going on failed offensives is not "initiative":

First of all, to have the initiative in war is extremely important. If you remain passive and don't engage in the enemy, you are handing the Russians the advantage: they can choose where and when to engage. — ssu

This is a false dichotomy. The choice is not between being passive and undertaking a major offensive that suffers significant losses. While defending you can do plenty of things such as launch small counter offensives and so on that have a positive cost-benefit. By not wasting your forces you constantly threaten to engage them anywhere along the front line as well as have them available (because they are not dead or destroyed) to reinforce lines where it is suitable to defend (i.e. not a few building left in Bakhmut but somewhere else that's more suitable or defence).

With such a strategy Ukraine can single (or explicitly say) that they can't defeat the Russians, but the Russians can't defeat them either, so it's better to accept our perfectly reasonable offer (which is the problem, Zelensky does not want to offer anything Russia might accept, seek concessions from either Russia or the EU or even the United States to compensate what he gives Russia to end the conflict).

How you give the Russians the option to simply defeat you is by wasting your forces in undertaking fools errands and no longer having the reserves necessary to maintain a defence on a 1000 km front or prevent the Russians from encircling the capital successfully this time and so on.

It's reported Ukraine has lost 4 MiGs in this offensive so far and also could be easily 6-18 months to actually have any F16s in Ukraine ... so that's a pretty significant loss of air capabilities that could have been used to keep things together until said F16s arise. Now, fog of war, who knows anything, but the point is if you want your offensive to have a good chance of success then you committing your planes you may need to do.

As the Western countries aren't themselves in war, there isn't a huge "ramping up" of manufacturing. Basically only Poland is making huge investments in armament. Yet Western manufacturers know that if the war ends, then the market immediately shuts down. Hence the increase in production is only marginal. — ssu

The West keeps saying they'll "do whatever it takes" blah, blah, blah ... but we agree that the goal here is not "Ukraine winning" in any military sense.

Also,

A. it's not "Western manufacturers" who have decided not to ramp up manufacturing and NATO just has to accept that. If NATO wanted it could just order the rounds needed to fight a long war, or provide "cost +" contracts to build the capacity for it ... and if they aren't needed because there was a settlement ... well maybe there's a settlement precisely because the West has demonstrated commitment to a long war!!

B. governments could literally pass a law ordering these companies to produce whatever the government wants.

Ukraine isn't running out of able bodies. Do notice that counterattack has been quite local and limited. Ukrainians understand well that this war can go on for a long time. After all, it started in 2014. — ssu

First, my point was that is a risk on the Ukrainian side of attritional warfare. They have less people so they will run out of people first.

Second, we don't see Ukraine's "million man army" in the field or anything close to that and I would put good money on that being because they ran out of able bodies, explaining expanding to 60 as well as require women to register for the draft too.

I can speak from experience, and I think you as well, it's not easy being a soldier. It's really very tough and a lot of people simply can't handle it mentally or physically and that includes people who "looked good on paper". A lot of people are not only ineffective soldiers but instead a liability on the battlefield: unreliable, unpredictable and down right dangerous (and this includes professional soldiers ... just a lot less compared to drafting large swaths of the population with basically not filter).

There's a reason young and fit men have been the "go to" source of front line soldiers throughout history, and if you look at this pool of men it's not all that much in a population such as Ukraine when you factor in modern sensibilities and we don't have societies anymore 100% dedicated to warfare that throw babies of cliffs to prove their toughness or similar hazing rituals.

Warfare is also a lot more complicated nowadays than standing in a phalanx and I would also say a lot more terrifying.

Furthermore, as we've discussed plenty, armour and air defence really is essential for any offensive manoeuvres and these systems require training which requires time, the extent people can "learn on the job" in the front lines I think is extremely limited in considering assault capabilities. People can learn how to dig and stand in a trench and fire in the general direction of the enemy as well as fire shoulder launched missiles; which is why when that was the most successful phase of the war when such tactics were relevant (and therefore Ukraine had the highest leverage).

As I mentioned when it was happening in the first weeks of the invasion, ATGM's and stingers and the like are really great for arresting Russian advances and inflicting serious damage, but cannot possibly be the basis of any offensive manoeuvres (so Ukraine cannot "win" on that basis and should negotiate; the West decided instead to pretend that was feasible but eventually accept the obvious military reality and supply tanks, but too little too late in my opinion, but had they been early worm on that ... maybe Russia blows up massive Western tank columns with tactical nukes, so we'll just pretend people can just run around with ATGM's and win a conventional war).

Do we know that it fires significantly more shells than Ukraine now? Can you provide any sources? — Jabberwock

If you follow pretty much any source about the war, West or Russia or Qatari or Indian or whatever, the Russians firing significantly more shells at every phase of the war I have never seen even remotely questioned.

Here's a source from the Washington post

Even amid a shortage, Ukraine is firing about 7,700 shells per day, or roughly one every six seconds, according to a Ukrainian military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Russia, which may also be running low, is firing more — by some estimates triple that amount. — Facing critical ammunition shortage, Ukrainian troops ration shells

As long as Russia had artillery advantage, it pushed forward, because it is essentially the only tactics they have used. Then they stopped. — Jabberwock

You need more than an artillery advantage.

Since Bakhmut (which the Russians captured by the way) there has been a "who launches their offensive first" game.

It's to the Russians advantage that Ukraine goes first, for a bunch of reasons that I can explain if you want, so Russia waited them out.

Ukraine definitely would have preferred Russia launch some major offensive and then be on the defensive, but Russia had no media pressure to do so.

And it will not be 'exposed salient' - if the land bridge falls, then most likely the Kherson oblast falls as well, Russians will not be able to supply the area just from Crimea. — Jabberwock

Absolutely classic arm-chair general analysis.

Crimea is a massive island with a massive naval base and a whole bunch of military bases and can be supplied by both road and ferry and there are already hundred thousand or more troops that would be to the West of any land-bridge cut, troops with plenty of ammunition and supplies already stationed there.

It would take a significant amount of time for supplies to even start to be an issue, so this Ukrainian salient cutting the land bridge would need to hold out from intense well supplied attacks from both sides while itself having significant supply issues, which if you really can't see what they would be I can explain it to you.

For Ukraine to solve those issues would require an absolutely massive force to not only punch through Russian lines and make this salient in the first place but then dig in and hold the entire salient and get supplies in under constant attacks and so on ... in addition to needing to hold all the rest of the lines as well where Russia could counter offensive taking advantage of any weakness.

What you describe is not remotely close to being some easy thing Ukrainians can casually do.

Now, if NATO trained up a 200 000 well equipped army that's ready to enter the fight and do this thing on top of everyone who is already there and have been holding lines more-or-less, then, ok, I would say it's definitely doable with such a force, even without the air cover, and the war is about to get super messy, as it's unclear what the Russians would do.

And, as I've mentioned before, maybe there is some secret island where NATO has built up a 200 000 man force. We can't know for sure, but the only reports I've seen is that NATO trained 35 000 for this offensive operation, which is really just not enough to do what you're talking about.

Of course, we'll soon find out who's right and who's wrong, that's for sure.

They have not done that because they were not ready. And yes, it will take tens of thousands of lives and yes, it could still fail. Still, it is the best manuever at this time. — Jabberwock

Spending tens of thousands of lives and still failing would definitely be a complete military catastrophe, and considering that risk you'd need pretty powerful arguments about why it is worth the risk you're talking about, not just stating "it is the best manuever at this time".

And I am not saying that Ukrainians will surely suceed - only that they have a reasonable chance. The claim that they have 'zero chance' is rather absurd. — Jabberwock

Leaving out the word qualifying "zero chance" that appears immediately before it is simply dishonest.

What I state is:

My theory is that Ukraine's offensive has essentially zero chance of succeeding and NATO and the Ukrainians know that. — boethius

"Essentially zero chance" means very close to zero.

When this cutting the land bridge manoeuvre had I think some reasonable chance (but still pretty low and would be at extremely high cost) was last year before the Russian mobilisations and building up all these fortifications and mine fields as well as before retreating from Kherson and consolidating the lines (while sanctions were causing serious disruptions etc.).

Why that didn't happen is I think is likely for the exact same problem considering the idea now: what then? If you do cut the land bridge, you need to hold it, and well supplied Russians cutting the salient from both sides would result in a massive encirclement. So, instead Ukraine went with some largely propaganda wins of Kherson and Kharkiv (notice neither lead to cutting the land bridge, and if you wanted to cut the land bridge, even better if there's a bunch of Russians even more cut off in West-Kherson).

Which is the general problem of the Ukrainian idea of "winning" on the battlefield: the only way to actually end the war through solely military means is to invade and conquer Russia. Simply because this war has this strange framework of "Ukraine can't / won't attack Russia proper" doesn't somehow just get rid of the basic dynamic of every previous war that "winning" by military means requires conquering your enemy.

The alternative to conquering your enemy is a negotiated settlement, a forever war ... or ... getting conquered.

Now, people argue a forever war, or as close as can be managed, is good for the West. I'm not convinced this is even true, but what is clearly true is that a forever war that does not result in victory for Ukraine cannot possibly be good for the average Ukrainian. In such circumstances, the longer the war goes on the worse it is for the weaker side, never better, mainly because the stronger side will feel they need more and more compensation for the war going forward. Now, you may say those feelings are unjustified, that's certainly a valid debate on philosophyforum, but the reality is that's what will inform negotiating positions: the more the war goes on, the more Ukrainians need will need to give up in a peace settlement, not less.

This of course creates a classic cycle of a long war where the losing side can't accept the costs since "day x" (where they had the most leverage) has not gained anything and the stronger side feels they need to have more and more to "show for it" to justify the fighting and losses, making it even harder for the weaker side to compromise.

The whole reason for a conventional deterrent against a stronger force is basically "mutually assured pain": it maybe not rational for the weaker side to fight a long war as they'll lose, but it may not be rational either for the stronger side to fight a long war either as it's not cost-beneficial.

Which is a big part of the tragedy here, that Ukraine had a good negotiating position early on in the war, by not capitulating and clearly demonstrating their will to fight. Unfortunately for everyone and their relatives who have died since, a good negotiating position doesn't mean you get what you want. Because Zelensky understands basically nothing about politics, Ukraine not only had a good negotiating position against Russia but also against the EU. Zelensky could have leveraged the EU's desire to keep getting Russian gas to get more from either Russia or the EU in compensation for ending the war and business as usual continuing. For example, Russia has stated multiple times it doesn't have a problem with Ukraine joining the EU, so Zelensky could have leveraged the early good negotiating position to get that EU membership one way or another, investment, all sorts of stuff etc.

Fast forward to today and all that leverage playing the EU and Russia against each other (in the sense they both want things from each other at the time; mainly maintain the oil and gas trade) to get the best possible deal for Ukraine is mostly gone.

Instead, Zelensky listens to the UK and US who are both not part of the EU, surprise, surprise not only have the least interest in the war stopping but plenty of arms-dealing reasons for the war to continue, not to mention different currencies that could use, maybe even need, a weak Euro (what I believe this war is ultimately about). But what did Zelensky get for stopping negotiations and continuing the war? Just more war.

Russia has long ceased to have any artillery advantage, with missiles it is clearly at a disadvantage - it has spent most of its stocks last year, now it is using mostly current production. — Jabberwock

This is simply pure invention. We didn't know Russia's stock before before, during nor now.

What we do seem to know is Russia fires significantly more shells than Ukraine. I've not seen that disputed anywhere, except your comment here being the very first time.

Moreover, unlike the Western counterparts, they are too inaccurate to be used very effectively on the frontline. — Jabberwock

First, dumb shells can be very accurate even in adverse conditions and pencil and paper calculations. I've seen this done first hand. It's just math and skill (of everyone involved). Self propelled artillery with everything done by computer can be quite reliable and keep in mind that every observed hit is data for recalibrating things.

Second, a large part of the tactical use of artillery is to suppress enemy movement. You have no idea where incoming shells are going to hit, where the next will hit and for how long, and the incapacitating range of these shells can be hundred meters, so infantry take cover and hence don't go anywhere in the meanwhile. Even outside lethal range, small shrapnel pieces can still penetrate the skin causing wounds that slow people down, can get infected and aren't a good thing.

Third, Russia too has guided munitions, but more importantly even Western media admits Russia is dominating the electronic warfare front, downing Ukrainian drones while flying its own. Even if you have guided munitions of whatever sort you need to be able to see what you're firing at.

kraine still has enough HIMARS and now also Shadow Storms, which it uses quite well — Jabberwock

These systems do not cover infantry and breach fortified front lines, they can blowup high value targets, such as the general (one use of US spy satellites and these sorts of expensive missiles).

Of note about this particular general, at least according to Reuters, the source of this news is from a Russian blogger and not confirmed by the Russian military. So who knows, but obviously long range guided missiles can attack such high value targets, but that doesn't actually win any battles.

And the difference in the field is also rather important: all Ukrainians have to do to free Kherson and most of Zaporozhe is to cut the path to the sea - they do not even have to take Mariupol or Berdyansk. — Jabberwock

If "all they have to do" is that ... why haven't they done it yet?

What you're talking about could easily cost tens of thousands of lives and still fail.

Worse, even if Ukrainians succeeded in such a manoeuvre it does not result in the situation of just needing to decide whether to invade Crimea or call it a day.

Russia will immediately counter attack to retake the land bridge, cutting North to isolate this exposed salient. It would continue to be fierce fighting and Ukrainians will need to keep this salient supplied to even stand a chance.

It's only if you leave your enemy alone for an entire year that they build up massive multi-layers fortified lines behind a fortified buffer zone and mine fields everywhere. The Russians are unlikely to do that, and would be attacking from both directions to retake the land in question.

... Which Ukrainians in the real world have not even gone through the buffer zone to reach the first fortified line, and you think reaching the sea is basically a done deal?

That is, they have 90 km to go (out of which they made 20). Sure, the main line will be tougher, there will be mines and defence lines, so losses are expected, but the situation still favors them. As the whole belt is within the range of Ukrainian missiles and some of its artillery, the Russian defence will lack significant depth. — Jabberwock

As pointed out above, if Ukraine manages to create a salient it will be under attack from the West and East.

What you're talking about is not some easy task and even if done you'd then need to hold onto this salient that cuts the land bridge requiring significant and continuous supplies.

But we'll obviously see in the coming weeks who's right and who's wrong.

My theory is that Ukraine's offensive has essentially zero chance of succeeding and NATO and the Ukrainians know that.

So why do it anyways?

The militarily prudent thing for Ukraine to have done is do to the Russians strategy of digging in, inflict losses and just retreating whenever defences degrade, conserving forces and vehicles as much as possible. Simply because Russia has more numbers and capabilities obviously does not mean it can easily win, as we've seen in the war so far the defender has significant advantage.

If Ukraine spent lives and equipment more conservatively, it would be clear Russia could not possibly "win" and would be forced to negotiate.

The problem is, Ukraine and NATO has defined Russia "winning" as holding on to any Ukrainian territory whatsoever and Ukraine losing as giving up any territory whatsoever and the only acceptable outcome is removing Russia from the lands formerly known as Ukrainian, including Crimea.

What logically follows from this idea is "holding on" to every inch of territory at incredible cost, such as in Bakhmut, and also continuously promising an offensive that will push Russian forces all the way back to their previous border.

This political posture "plays well" for the Western media, building up the mythology needed to keep the arms flowing, but if it's impossible to deliver on, regardless of the arms that can be pumped in, you end up in this kind of situation of needing an offensive simply to fit the narrative.

This not only wastes significant men and material but will boost Russian morale while lowering Ukrainian morale, and ultimately a narrative that is nonsensical will eventually fall apart lowering Western morale generally speaking. We're already seeing the cracks.

Those apologetics don't make much sense (to me anyway).
Socialists sort of promoting nationalist authoritatian oppressive degenerative capitalist Kremlin...? :brow:
Maybe they are just proxies. — jorndoe

Even the mainstream Western media has thrown plenty of doubt on what caused the dam to collapse, mainly due to there being literally zero evidence and, more importantly, the Western media has got the memo to stop just repeating everything Ukraine says and start being critical (setting up the, if not resolution, then Western aid pullback).

As for the:

the cui bono card — SophistiCat

Cui bono is literally the first thing any investigator asks themselves when confronted with literally any crime.

Doesn't mean who benefits is who did it, but it's clearly at least worth checking out.

You think a defence attorney has ever said in response to the evidence their client pocketed the insurance money ... "OMG, here we go, prosecutor playing the 'cui bono card', I rest my case."

Seems that three of the six Leopard 2 mine-clearing tanks that Finland gave to Ukraine have met their end. But in a war of attrition, you spend materiel. The side that is attacking will face losses, if it doesn't have superiority on the battlefield. Yet likely the counterattack will go on for weeks or for months. — ssu

Unfortunately I don't have much time for the forum just right now ... but who's ramping up manufacturing to replace this material? Likewise, where will people get replaced from when Ukraine starts to run out of able bodies?

The premise that the war is attritional is almost exactly the same as the premise Ukraine cannot possibly win.

As I pointed out months and months ago, Ukrainian offensives will face all the same problems of Russian offensives (mines and ATGM's make it very difficult to advance) ... just with far less capabilities. Additional capabilities (overwhelming artillery, glide bombs, missiles of various kinds) are why Russia can advance at all.

Even more worryingly for Ukraine, there seems to be plenty of footage of both Russian helicopters and planes engaging vehicles over the front, which indicates Ukraine anti-air capabilities are significantly degraded (basically exactly what the leaked papers described).

To make matters even worse for Ukraine, it continues to fight with significant artillery disadvantage.

There is basically not a single metric in which Ukraine has an advantage that can compensate all the disadvantages (numbers, vehicles, air power, electronic warfare, missiles and anything else).

The Ukrainian offensives makes zero sense and is only happening because it is part of the media narrative that promised there would be an offensive. Lives are being spent basically to just prop up a delusional propaganda version of the world a little while longer.

You do notice that there has to be done some engineering work to get these fit into an aircraft? Or to create such multi-function radars that act both in the search and the targeting mode. — ssu

You don't need to fit these radars into an aircraft, fighters already have radars that can track, they have to be closer than these massive ground based radars but they can be at high altitude and looking down to track low flying targets trying to evade said massive ground based radars.

(Just a technical note, use acronym SAM, surface to air missile, as with missiles AA stands for air-to-air missiles) — ssu

I'm honestly not sure, I've never seen AA to mean air-to-air missile, and if in some technical discussions somewhere that abbreviation is used, the general understanding is standing for Anti-Air, for example:

Poland's AA defences were no match for the German attack, and the situation was similar in other European countries.[56] Significant AAW (Anti-Air Warfare) started with the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940. QF 3.7-inch AA guns provided the backbone of the ground-based AA defences, although initially significant numbers of QF 3-inch 20 cwt were also used. The Army's Anti-aircraft command, which was under command of the Air Defence UK organisation, grew to 12 AA divisions in 3 AA corps. Bofors 40 mm guns entered service in increasing numbers. In addition, the RAF regiment was formed in 1941 with responsibility for airfield air defence, eventually with Bofors 40 mm as their main armament. Fixed AA defences, using HAA and LAA, were established by the Army in key overseas places, notably Malta, Suez Canal and Singapore. — Anti-Aircraft Warfare

And refers generally to AA systems. However, I agree SAM is more specific, but to a general audience (such anyone who may be reading this) my assumption is that they would read AA as anti-air. Now I think most English speakers would be familiar with SAM also, but simply saying ground based AA missile seemed to me the clearest way to for the largest audience. But I'm happy to use SAM and people need to look it up if they don't know what it is.

Those high flying Russian fighters have to stay out of the reach of the Ukrainian GBAD also. And obviously those future F-16s, when they come, will be used very cautiously. Yet in any case, the outcome relies on a large variety of factors than just the specs of the weapon systems. The way the weapon systems are used, the way the forces operate is far more important than the technical aspects of a weapon system. — ssu

Yes, we definitely agree the use of the F16s will be cautious, and there is plenty of airspace hundreds of kilometres out of range of any of the missiles we've been discussing.

The purpose of discussing the technical aspects here is to evaluate the risks involved. What a system can and can't do is the starting point of the risk analysis in trying to plan operations.

The point of developing the the facts that Russian fighters can fly high and look down is simply to establish that "flying low" is not some easy solution to the problem of SAMs.

Taking into consideration the speeds at which high altitude Russian fighters can fly, is to simply give an idea that Russia can potentially chase these low flying F16s at high speeds and maybe willing to risk being shot down themselves to do so, because they underestimated the risk, or because they have more aircraft or because they are confident they can destroy the F16 before being themselves destroyed (or all three). One certainly could not be exactly sure Russians wouldn't take large risks to shoot down your F16 nor be exactly sure what the capabilities of their systems are.

Vis-a-vis the speed of Russian missiles compared the their American counterparts, I completely agree that "The way the weapon systems are used, the way the forces operate is far more important than the technical aspects of a weapon system," but the underlying lesson here is that American weapons have been developed to be effective in the context American war fighting system and we are, in my view, starting to see the limits of what can be picked out of the US system, dropped in Ukraine in an entirely different context than the designers had in mind in making the specifications and the war planners had in mind in deciding how many such systems to order.

Just to give on example:why did we see footage of Bayraktar-drones destroying Russian SAM launchers early in the war and not anymore? The reason is that at start of the war there were so many limitations to SAM use as the Russian aircraft indeed flew over Ukrainian territory, that Bayraktars could have a field day. Then when Russian aircraft weren't flying anymore in Ukrainian territory (or at least, not so much), then the decision to fire on an aircraft was made easy. After all, we ought to remember the unfortunate use of a BUK-M1 shooting down that Malesian plane earlier. — ssu

Completely agree.

The men and the military itself does matter also. Best example is just how few Abrams tanks were destroyed when operated by the US Army in Iraq and how many similar tanks have been destroyed by the Houthis fighting Saudi-Arabian troops in Yemen. — ssu

That's somewhat an oversimplification, as Iraq is flat and the US had overwhelming superior forces and "next generation" technology (in particular night vision) engaging in the open field. The war in Yemen is not so similar.

However, for the air war over Ukraine, Russians have proven proficient and their systems effective and presumably have shot down a significant amount of Ukrainian aircraft.

The F16s can keep Russian jets from flying all over Ukraine as in the first days of the war, but it is mostly a specifications issue: once a Russian jet leaves the cover of its own air defence bubble, F16s, either on patrol or then scrambled, can fire long range missiles at the Russian jet, so the Russian jets stay in their defensive bubbles to avoid that happening.

And if things get really bad with both SAM depletion and Russians able to effectively target F16 airbases in Ukraine, they can always simply be based in a NATO country. In terms of denying Russia air supremacy, they are clearly more useful than not having any planes.

Yeah, well, and AWACS or a fighter cannot yet act as an fire control radar to a GBAD missile. Not yet, at least. And it doesn't go like "fire in that direction and maybe the missile will find it's target". — ssu

Definitely firing missiles blindly in a general direction is unlikely to succeed.

However, sending targeting information from one system to another is not difficult and exists in plenty of forms already.

I do not think sharing the information would be the limiting factor, but rather the range of radar to track targets from look down which will be closely guarded secret.

The wikipedia article on this is barely a page long, but does inform us the technology is from the 60s:

Flight tests of the AN/ASG-18 system, using a modified Convair B-58, began in 1960.[3] During the 1960s, YF-12 flight tests were conducted, which included the use of the YF-12's onboard AN/ASG-18 radar system in conjunction with AIM-47 missiles to shoot down target drones. — Lookdown / shootdown

So, presumably this exact problem has been looked at pretty closely by the developers of these systems.

For what it's worth, ChatGPT claims:

Generally speaking, a high-performance radar in lookdown mode can detect and track targets at ranges of tens to hundreds of miles (or kilometers), depending on the size and altitude of the target, the radar's power and sensitivity, and the clutter conditions. — ChatGPT

However, what we can know is that it's obviously a risk that Russia has such capabilities and they work fine, so will you risk your F16's ... to accomplish what?

Or in other words, the effective engagement range of a SAM is far shorter than it's max range. — ssu

Yes, but how much is the critical question.

In the situation we are discussing, low flying aircraft, such as to avoid Russian ground based AA missiles, cannot reach much above Mach 1. So this is only reducing the effective range of the missile by 20% and that's assuming the F16 is already flying in the opposite direction.

The fact range of anti-air missile (of any kind) is reduced by your speed running away is an advantage to the Russians in this situation of trying to fly high, look-down and track and maybe send tracking information to said GBAD systems or then maybe just shoot at themselves.

The Sukhoi Su-35 can MiG-29 fly above mach 2 at high altitude and the MiG 25 and 31 close to or exceeding mach 3, though with risk to the engines (still better then being shot down).

Flying away at Mach 3 is reducing the range of a Mach 5 missile by 70%, which is pretty significant.

The purpose of these considerations is that if you want to cover your F16 operations near the front with your own ground based air defence, you may need to get really close to the front, now risking your critical GBAD systems, otherwise you risk a supersonic interception, firing missiles and then easily running away at Mach 3 when your F16 is stuck at barely above mach 1 (ChatGPT claims "While I couldn't find an exact figure for the F-16's maximum speed at low altitudes, it is generally expected to be around Mach 1.2 to Mach 1.4 ").

To make matters worse, at least according to Wikipedia, the:

Speed PAC-2/PAC-3: Mach 4.1 — MIM-104 Patriot, wikipedia

And,

Maximum speed: Mach 4. — AIM-120 AMRAAM, wikipedia

Whereas:

The S-300FM Fort-M (Russian: С-300ФМ, DoD designation SA-N-20) is another naval version of the system, installed only on the Kirov-class cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, and introducing the new 48N6 missile. It was introduced in 1990 and has a missile speed of approximately Mach 6 for a maximum target engagement speed of up to Mach 8.5, a warhead size of 150 kg (330 lb), an engagement range of 5–150 km (3.1–93 mi), and an altitude envelope of 10–27 km (6.2–16.8 mi).
— S-300 missile system

And there's actually the specifications of the missiles and speeds further down the page, for example:

V55K, range 47 km, mach 5.5
5V55R, range 75/90 km, mach 5.5
5V55U, range 150 km, mach 5.8
48N6P-01, 195 km, mach 5.8

Which is a lot faster than a low flying F16.

Of note, the Russian air-air missile is also faster than its American counter-part, "Maximum speed Mach 5 – Mach 6", and, at least according to Wikipedia:

Mid-body strakes enhance lift[1] hence increases range. According to Defence Today, the range depends on the flight profile, from 80 nautical miles (150 km) for a direct shot[1] to 215 nautical miles (398 km) for a cruise glide profile.[...]

The missile can attack targets at altitudes of 15–25,000 meters, guided semi-actively or actively through the Agat 9B-1388 system.[5] — R-37 (missile)

Maybe US has faster missiles (but will they supply them to Ukraine?), but whatever the speeds involved, I think we agree that flying near Russian airspace is risky and to simply "help" in attritional warfare makes no sense to risk.

Of course, if some decisive battles take place that may end the war one way or another then maybe it would make sense to send in aircraft, but my in the context of my overall position I do not think such battles will take place, and if they do it would be battles that may decisive in Russia's favour, not Ukraine.

Furthermore, all these missiles may explain why Ukraine has lost most of its aircraft and is asking for F16s and sending pilots to train on these aircraft instead of flying existing aircraft in Ukraine.

And my point is just why other countries would have zero incentive to trade with the West?

Many countries would be happy if the world trade would be done other currency than dollars. But that simply is something that goes back to older times. — ssu

Obviously there's no incentive to not have trade routes open, the question is the cost extracted by the US to engage with their system.

Countries, basically all countries, want the access to trade but not the cost, so this gives rise to negotiations and trade agreements.

If there's no where else to go, your negotiating position is weak (and sanctions or the threat of sanctions are basically only possible in such conditions, otherwise you're only harming yourself by blocking your own access to markets without that even being all that negative for said countries of those markets), whereas even the hypothetical of somewhere else to go strengthens your negotiating position.

It's not a binary thing and the future has to be "priced in".

For example, a monopoly may start lowering their prices simply due to the existence of an alternative even if that alternative isn't very good or can't possibly scale ... yet. This happens all the time in hardware in order to protect market share, hopefully drive the upstart out of business, and hardware monopolies are accused of this all the time.

In software the solution is to make your product free and make money on advertisement or other added value since a monopoly position is worth more than any revenue at all of selling your product. Why even Windows is free now.

US foreign policy can be viewed as protecting their monopoly on the global trading system.

Now, you may say a competitor arising and putting downward price pressure of what the US charges (not always money ...) for accessing their system is good for most people on the planet and even most Americans.

I would not have problems agreeing with. This change isn't some catastrophe and the US will still be there and much, if not most, of the globe will still be subscribed to Pax Americana, but it is a profound change for all those current subscribers that aren't "loyal fans". Maybe the US will need to offer a advert-free version for example.

I have a meeting starting a few minutes, so I'll respond to the rest of your points later, but I feel we do agree on the fundamentals just have different attitudes towards its meaning.

And, of course, these changes are very new, maybe Russia's alternative economic system grows or falls apart, but that Russia has survived sanctions so far is a major geopolitical change and some countries, I'd say most importantly Iran, are jumping on the prospective benefits of this change.

And? Even if the S-400 has a great range, again basic physics comes to play as you remarked to Boethius. The Earth is round and also Ukraine a big country. Hence you can do the math just how this effects target acquisition of radars and their ability to track low flying aircraft. — ssu

The mission purpose of S-400 long range missiles are against big and slow targets such as tankers and AWAKS, to keep these as far way from the fight as possible.

However, you could also have the situation where high flying Russian fighters can track low-flying F16, though out of range, so an S-300 or S-400 could then engage with guidance from the Russian fighters.

To what extent this is likely to occur, a capability Russia has even developed, is a different question, but, at least in principle, simply because ground based radar are limited by the horizon does not mean those missiles cannot engage with air-based tracking.

Keep in mind also that high flying supersonic fighters decrease the range of AA systems because they can outrun incoming missiles. I.e. the range of a 100 km missile travelling at mach 5 is reduced to 50km if fired at a target running away at mach 2.5, and this doesn't take into account altitude, counter measures or additional manoeuvres that will all favour the aircraft.

How SAM sites mitigate this is by moving around and simply waiting to turn on when the fighter is easily within range (such as with information provided by radar farther away, that can easily track high flying planes).

How fighters mitigate this is just staying behind their own lines where, presumably, there are no enemy SAM sites that may turn on suddenly.

I don't see why not.

Every use of these F-16s will incur some risk.

One advantage the Ukrainians will have is the intel they are getting from the US and other nations will probably allow them to craft a fairly accurate picture of the Russian AA network and use it to their advantage. — Tzeentch

By risk, I mean significantly more risk. Flying anywhere near Russia / the front is going to be significantly more risky than flying along the border of Poland or Romania / inside those countries.

My contention is the F16s will stay far closer to Polish and Romanian air space than Russian.

The other proposed roles for the F-16s I don't find so convincing. The Russians barely use their air force over Ukraine, and taking down missiles with fighters is not ideal for the reasons I mentioned.

Are they going to put a 40 million dollar plane into the air to swat a handful of 20,000 dollar Iranian drones, with missiles that each cost a million also? — Tzeentch

Well 1 million is an exaggeration ... but not by much.

Pentagon Spent At Least $1.5 Million on Missiles to Down Three High-Altitude Objects — Wallstreet Journal

Maybe there are cheaper "low altitude" missiles, but I don't see why that would be. Each side winder costs about a third of a million USD.

That being said, probably just flying near them with a jet would cause them to fall out of the sky and certainly cheaper methods either exist or are being developed.

Actually doing so would not, in my opinion, be for the purposes of winning the war but simply testing systems in real world conditions, which is certainly a big factor, generally speaking, to get F16s into the war theatre.

Maybe they're anticipating a heavier use of air power by the Russians, however again I think planes would not be the logical choice if their intention was defensive use. — Tzeentch

This is my core argument about the F16s, that if air defence Ukraine were to completely fail then Russia would gain air supremacy and bomb and strafe freely over all of Ukraine.

The only reason far superior Russian air power hasn't been so decisive is because the Russians have the exact same problem I am describing of not being able to risk expensive planes in attritional warfare.

Compare to the first manoeuvre phase of the war where Russia took large amounts of territory and then Ukraine retook large amounts of territory, you at least "get something" for downed air craft and helicopters. Whether it was needed or then cost effective is another question, but it at least makes sense to risk planes when decisive battles are being fought to take strategic ground.

Obviously Russia didn't like losing aircraft and helicopters, but had they not taken and held the land bridge to Crimea that would have been far more embarrassing.

In an attritional phase of war, risking planes is just not justifiable. The amount of successful sorties you need over the front to justify the loss of an aircraft and pilot is incredibly high and there are far cheaper alternatives such as artillery.

Of course, ideally you can drop bombs from a safe distance from the front, which is now what's happening with the glide bombs.

F16s could, for example, be used to push these planes further back or, at least, keep them from coming closer.

The situation as I see it is that the West simply lacks the appropriate ground based air defence systems because NATO doctrine is air power based and the current situation is something the US never envisioned so doesn't have the systems. As far as I know, the only Western SAM system that has any numbers is the Patriot and it does not manoeuvre and is too expensive to make sense and doesn't have enough numbers anyways.

NATO is a "we're going to come to you and destroy you" kind of force, not a "we're going to sit here on steppe and try to see how long we can be attacked" kind of force.

With depletion of ground based AA missiles, depletion of Migs, the F16s may simply be the only option to prevent Russia from gaining complete air supremacy over Ukraine.

Preventing this is the only thing that makes Ukraines position maintainable and at least slow to erode.

Also, keep in mind that AA doesn't need to be depleted entirely, just enough that risking planes to support large manoeuvres is justifiable.

I don't remember who it was, but don't the Russians have ~1,000 4th and 5th generation fighters lying around? Why wouldn't they be able to risk those? — Tzeentch

It was the US chief of the joint chiefs of staff that explained F16s aren't a magic solution and there is no way to defeat Russia in the air considering their 1000 comparable planes.

Obviously 10 < 1000; 10 being the billion dollar example in the General's comparison, but whatever Ukraine is going to get will be far from 1000.

As for risking Russias 1000 fighters, Russia obviously can and did and does. The question is one of cost effectiveness.

For example, the value of the land bridge to Crimea can be measured in 10s of billions to hundreds of dollars, long term one could argue trillions of dollars. 10s of billions would be the cost to substitute the canal that supplied Crimea with fresh water, and hundreds of billions would represent all the land, assets and people, and if there's really immense gas reservers, then maybe all this can be tallied up to a trillion or more. Of course, you'd then need to do a levelized net-present value calculation including the cost of the war, sanctions and so on, to get an idea of what it's really worth "right now", but clearly a lot.

Of course it could be argued that it is a net loss, but that doesn't really matter once the war starts and for the purposes of risking planes.

Even Russia's most expensive planes are worth far less than the territory gained, so it makes sense to risk them in that pursuit. Even if the war is an overall negative, you'd still need to mitigate that with conquering as much territory as feasible (taking into consideration the need for pacification and defence and so on).

However, fast forward to the current attritional phase of the war and it simply makes no sense to risk expensive planes and pilots to take a 100 meters of Bakhmut, so we didn't see planes dive bombing and strafing Ukrainian positions.

Where the calculation would change is if Ukrainian both air defence depletes enough and there is a proposed series manoeuvres that can win the war. Now, ok, maybe some aircraft will be lost, but the value of ending the war sooner rather than later is again measures in the tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars.

And from bits and pieces that have been put together about the first days of the war, Russia did mostly succeed in destroying nearly all of Ukraine air defence, hit runways etc. and gained air superiority over most of Ukraine which was essential in taking all the territory in so short a time.

However, then the West supplied large amounts of shoulder launched missiles and started to source Soviet components and systems from other ex-Soviet states to repair / rebuild Ukraine's integrated SEAD system, which then pushed Russian aircraft behind the Russian front line and not only did large offensive manoeuvres end for the Russians but they needed to retreat from large amounts of territory to consolidate their gains.

The small force Russia invaded with only made sense with air superiority as a force multiplier, so Russia needed to call up more troops and dig in over the entire front line. The extent to which they expected this may happen is another question, but this is clearly what did happen.

But what else did we see when the Russians started to dig in and consolidate ground based defences? A constant barrage of missile, drone attacks and constant sorties as close as possible to Ukraine, that have depleted Ukrainian air defence.

The situation is one in which air defence simply makes no sense in an attritional mode. The only time it would make sense to engage in attritional air defence warfare is if you're also attritting the enemies air defence, which is not what's happening.

In the current trajectory, eventually Russia will gain air supremacy.

And this is what the recent pentagon leaks basically say, that Ukraine will be soon fully depleted (by now when the document was written, but obviously Ukraine can ration missiles and be provided more, such as the Patriot to delay depletion), and if Western SAMs aren't a long term solution either, then F16s are really the only option to continue to deny Russia complete air supremacy.

This, in my view, is the mission of the F16s; nothing remotely close to supporting Ukrainian ground forces with strike missions.

Depending how they operate, they can.

AA systems may have hundreds of kilometers of range, but the radar horizon is a severely limiting factor when it comes to low-flying targets. — Tzeentch

The Ukrainians would have the same problem as the Russians did in facing man portable missile launchers, but in addition to that the Russians fighters have radar look-down capabilities that could then transmit that information to the SAMs.

Now, it maybe true the Russian fighters would need to take risks to get close enough to these F16 to track them with look-down, but the fact your enemy is also risking a plane immediately justifies risking your own plane in attritional warfare.

The risks are really high, and clearly far higher for the attacking aircraft trying to penetrate enemy SEAD systems and evade enemy fighters, than it is for the defending aircraft largely operating within their safety bubble. This is in the addition to the inherent risk of flying low under high stress.

I really don't see Ukraine flying these F16s anywhere close to Russian airspace.

Keep in mind also that Russia also has air superiority fighters, which we have not seen much of. Some say it's because they don't work, but another explanation is that it simply makes no sense for Russia to risk it's modern / modernised superiority fighters to shoot down Soviet era fighters.

To shoot down F16s is a completely different equation and you would likely see Russia taking far greater risks to shoot them down. Each F16 and pilot would not only represent a large fraction of the Ukrainian air force but it would be a huge propaganda win. If Russia lose some aircraft in the process, as the general notes they have a thousand more.

What SEAD might be able to accomplish for the Ukrainians is to provide temporary defensive cover to accomodate air strikes.

And in line with what Mearsheimer argued, I think this is likely what the Ukrainians plan to do with the F-16s. — Tzeentch

Though everything up to hear you say in your comment is true, I do not think it leads to this conclusion.

Fighters are not good at permanent air defence of a large area for the reasons you cite.

However, a small number of expensive planes can't be risked to conduct air strikes.

We'll see, but my guess is the main reason to be talking about F16 is to try to keep Ukrainian morale and have something else to talk about.

The second reason is to lob missiles as @ssu describes, just it's not so effective at shooting anything down but the idea is to stay at a safe distance and deny Russian air supremacy.

For, the Russians can't risk much their expensive planes either, so as long as Ukraine has planes with missiles that can get into the air and shoot missiles then this is a big risk to Russian fighters.

The F16s don't need to be on permanent patrol, but can scramble in the event there is Russian planes coming over the front lines to bomb stuff, which doesn't happen because Ukraine can shoot missiles at them.

Currently Russia keeps its planes behind the front line because Ukraine still has some AA systems and missiles, the F16s would, at best, keep this status quo (which isn't "good" as Russia can launch plenty of missiles and glide bombs from a safe distance, but it would be a lot worse if they could simply fly anywhere in Ukraine at will).

There is no decisive manoeuvre or single intense battle on the table that could resolve the conflict in Ukraine's favour, in which risking the planes may make sense, so at no point does it make sense to send out F16s to conduct air strikes (other than for propaganda purposes in safe locations or then because the propaganda win is worth the risk for essentially a one off).

As you note, Russia has multi layered advanced AA, SEAD, in addition to their fighters (that have look down radars, which would be where they bring unique AA capability).

The F16's are better than having no planes at all, but everything you explain just emphasises they cannot get near Russian forces and their use is severely limited.

Nope.

The vast majority of countries don't have such natural resources that Russia has. Many countries are quite vulnerable to sanctions. Starting with those countries that cannot feed their populations with their own domestic agricultural production. — ssu

You miss the point here.

The point is not that other countries can repeat what Russia has done from scratch, the point is that by completely removing Russia from the Western financial system Russia has both a need to create an alternative system as well as zero incentive (whether from fear or enticement) to cooperate in Western sanction regimes against US foes.

Russia did not opt out of the Western financial system by itself, whether because there was no desire to or perhaps there was desire but it would have been political unfeasible to just nope out of the Western economic system. Why didn't Russia do it before? Because of carrots and sticks the US can brandy about the issue: in other words Russia stayed in the Western financial system because it wanted to for the benefits as well as not wanting to risk what happens if you leave, providing the West, in particular the US, leverage in maintaining their "rules based order".

If we take the usual suspects of the sanctions world -- Iran, North Korean, Cuba, Venezuela -- they are simply not large enough countries to create some alternative economic system, and most countries and most companies would not see a cost-benefit to running foul of the US by violating US sanctions. Of course, random companies and smugglers will pop up to benefit from a little sanctions-arbitrage but such supply lines are unreliable and at a higher cost. Simply because you can get around sanctions doesn't mean it's convenient.

Someone could counter with the argument that there's China. Obviously the Chinese hub is the answer? Well, how much of that Chinese GDP comes from trade with the West? A lot. The fact is, even if Brazil, China, India and South Africa among others would favor a multipolar economy system, they do not want to exclude themselves from trading with the West. — ssu

Yes, it's exactly that the Chinese hub is the answer.

How the situation has changed with Russia essentially joining this group is that Russia is not only significantly larger (a larger population than all these countries combined) but has the resources, has the leverage, to make an equal if not greater cost-benefit proposal to their trading partners. Russia can effectively say to many countries that: you continue to trade or you're not going to eat. As you note, that's a powerful argument to displease the US in favour of Russian foreign policy.

Does China need to sell us stuff? Or do we need to by Chinese stuff?

Sanctions are presented always as some moral fact-of-the-matter "right thing to do".

But what do sanctions represent? They represent firms making less money because they can't sell their goods and services to certain markets or source the same from said markets.

It's simply not a logic that scales well in the capitalist system. It takes considerable effort to maintain sanctions on small countries, it's simply not possible to go around ordering people to stop trading with a big enough country such as Russia. At some point it's just too costly and countries tell even the "mighty US" to take a hike.

But notice the "if they do have somewhere else to go". And actually that has been Putin's Russia's biggest problem: It's economy is little and has stagnated. It hasn't been a real alternative as opting to be with Russia and excluding the West is a disastrous choice to make. Hence CIS didn't fly, also because of economic reasons. — ssu

It's not a question of countries wanting to "opt out" as some sort of ideological choice.

It's a question of leverage. If you can potentially opt out of something you can drive a harder bargain, even if you don't plan to, compared to having no alternative.

Moreover, sanctions aren't relevant concerning the countries that play nice already with US foreign policy but rather countries that don't, we're talking about countries with some sort of ideological conflict with the US.

Now, even a decade ago a pretty common response would be that history is over, all those "ideological" countries stuck in the past will go away, everything will become liberal democracy serving a platform for a homogenous global capitalist system.

Those days seem long gone and rather things are going in the opposite direction.

As for Russia's economy. As you note yourself at the start of your comment, it's about the resources.

International leverage relations follow the hierarchy of needs: people need food and primary industries (upon which everything else is based) need resources.

If major producing countries simply continue to trade with Russia (especially China and India) and the Russian government and Russian companies have no concern for Western sanctions (why would they), then all currently sanctioned countries can simply "plug into" this Russian based alternative world trading system.

Of course, there's significant overlap with the normal world trading system, but that's exactly why it destroys sanctions generally speaking.

For, whatever you may say of the Russian governance system, dealing with an established Russian firm is going to be a lot more reliable and good for business than dealing with smugglers or fly-by-night companies.

Why Ukraine Will Win: Interview with Gen. Ben Hodges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsXNJlH-4iM&ab_channel=FranklyFukuyama — RogueAI

I listened to the entirely of this interview, and it's mostly them criticising the Biden administration for not committing hard enough to Ukraine, not making "winning an objective" (I believe their exact words), and that Ukraine needs far more advanced weaponry than they have now to "win" such as a large fleet of F16s.

They also repeat a lot useless tropes like Ukrainian soldiers are just smarter than Russian soldiers and even quicker witted than American soldiers in learning new equipment, but fail to realise that even if that were true the Russians don't have to learn new equipment.

But unless I missed something, the interviewer and interviewee do not explain why Ukraine will win but explain the massive escalation in arms supplies necessary to even have a chance, accept fear of Russian nuclear weapons is the reason for the "extra caution" (in their words) but that they feel this caution is baseless and recommend not being cautious.

I'm no expert on the Russian economy, but according to Mearsheimer Russia isn't mobilizing to a war economy. — Tzeentch

Although I think technically true, the arms industry is the second largest in Russia and a significant amount of the Soviet supplies and war production infrastructure significantly limits the need for a full wartime mobilisation in order to fight a much smaller country.

The West has been predicted the Russians will run out of nearly every piece of equipment or munition since essentially the start of the war. Maybe they will run out tomorrow but it seems unlikely.

It is reported Russia is firing much less artillery shells, certainly due to sustainment concerns, but they can compensate that with glide bombs as well as building heavy fortification and mine fields. In other words, the immense artillery expenditure to suppress Ukrainian troop movements, covered building more sustainable defensive and offensive alternatives.

F-16s can't fill the role of ground-based anti-air systems, so I would probably look for a different explanation. Especially since Russia sports one of the most sophisticated AA networks in the world, and the F-16s would have to contend with that. — Tzeentch

The talk of F16's is likely simply to not-talk about the Western tanks failing to save Bakhmut or suddenly launch some grand counter offensive.

Mearsheimer speculates that the F-16s are brought in to compensate for the lack of Ukrainian artillery, since (according to Mearsheimer) the Americans have ran out of artillery they can spare. — Tzeentch

Planes can only replace artillery with air superiority, otherwise in terms of resources it makes zero sense to risk a 100 000 000 USD plane because artillery shells can't be sourced. Although I agree with a lot of Mearsheimer's points, I don't think this is good speculation.

Indeed, the West talks up F16's for weeks and then come out and manage expectations.

Commenting on the F-16 fighters, Milley cautioned that they were not going to be “the magic weapon”.

“There are no magic weapons” – not the F-16s or other weapons, he said, noting that 10 F-16s could cost $2bn, including maintenance.

“The Russians have a thousand fourth and fifth-generation fighters, so if you’re going to contest Russia in the air, you’re going to need a substantial amount of fourth and fifth-generation fighters,” he said. — Aljazeera

Not that some F16s would be useless, they can fire various standoff munitions from a safe distance, but that would simply be replacing some lost capacity and not really changing anything.

I was unaware the "nuclear option" was coined by people trying to make it sound negative and something best to avoid. First time I heard it was listening to neo-cons gleefully recommending the "nuclear option" if Russia invaded Ukraine. Definitely adds some additional irony to it.

I don't think the war in Ukraine really erodes the position of the US. The fact is that the World cannot just go out with Russian oil and raw materials, and that's the main reason many countries aren't so keen to jump in the US bandwagon: the US won't guarantee them the resources. — ssu

I'm not sure you're agreeing or disagreeing.

It's precisely because of the Russian resources that sanctions haven't worked to isolate Russia. Now, if you want to argue US wasn't omnipotent before and aren't omnipotent now, that's obviously true, no argument. What changes, however, is leverage and negotiating positions.

Prior to the sanctions there was no alternative world financial system and even if countries could survive sanctions (Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Syria) it wasn't like they were doing "great" economically. Sanctions on small countries were an incredibly high cost to disagree with US foreign policy.

So, the US could leverage that in negotiations with other countries. Simply because something is survivable does not mean it isn't something to fear. Maybe not everyone wants to be like North Korea or Iran.

And this included negotiations with Russia. First, it was not a foregone conclusion that Russia was indeed big enough to simply build an alternative "low friction" trading regime with its various partners, in particular China and India (certainly if it was a foregone conclusion the West would have hesitated more). At minimum the prospect represents significant risks. Second, it was obviously not a Russian foreign policy objective to completely cut economic ties with the West ... or they wouldn't have kept building pipelines to said West.

And it is not a case that "oh well, Russia survived sanctions, you win some you lose some" because in cutting off Russia from the Western financial system they have zero incentive to maintain any trade frictions with the other bad boys at the back of the class, and so Russia surviving sanctions basically means everyone can now survive sanctions.

As noted in the analysis I cited, US sanctions (at the time) were far more effective than EU sanctions (a similar sized economy offering broadly comparable technologies) because the US runs the global financial system as a monopoly (at the time). You can only punish trade partners, whether buyers or suppliers, if they have no where else to go. If they do have somewhere else to go ... then they just say "fuck you, I'll go deal with these other people".

This is a profound geopolitical change.

Yes, the US was never and is not now omnipotent, but breaking with the "rules based system" (i.e. US global financial hegemony) was always hypothetically possible, but represented (since WWII) an immense "first mover" cost that prevented enough countries getting together to form an alternative financial block.

The US empire is not one of military conquest but primarily financial. Where both military force and sanctions plays a role in maintaining US empire is in punishing countries that get out of line, but notice that those countries are simply ruined, they are not conquered and re-integrated into the US economic system (a. la. every previous Empire).

Faced with these immense harms, the US can offer many (certainly in the short term, for the ruling elite, as well as long term in some cases) as benefits to not get out of line and do what you're told.

It's a carrot and stick approach.

What has eroded and will erode the US is position is the absolutely disastrous failure in Afghanistan and the equally catastrophic "War on Terror". Yeah, Americans might have forgotten the WoT, but the countries in the Middle East (and North Africa) have not — ssu

This is also true, and certainly the term eroded is better applied to the Afghanistan mission and in this new war a better term would be "abruptly change".

However, why 20 years in Afghanistan didn't really change anything is that an Empire fighting an insurgency somewhere is pretty normal. The US did not invest significant amounts of complex weapons systems and massive amounts of ammunition in Afghanistan as has been required in Ukraine. All throughout Afghanistan no one doubted the US would and could bomb others, which they did in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere for example.

And of course Afghanistan had zero impact on the global financial system.

Now, if you're thinking only that the US "close friends" won't go anywhere else, that the "NATO won't fall apart" etc. I agree with those positions. What is at stake in this world is the international relations outside "the West".

Relations that, on one level, don't really impact anyone in the West, mostly what's at stake in these countries is if some corporation is going to make slightly more money than they otherwise would. So, from this perspective one could have a "so what" attitude of what happens to US influence in far away places.

However, where things do affect things for actual Westerners is the fate of the USD. No one really knows what will happen to the USD if there emerges a global financial competitor.

It's nice to see that you see point of view.

I'm far less optimistic all these geopolitical changes won't end in disaster, but I agree with summary of what is actually happening.

I'm not sure he's arguing NATO will fall apart, such as Hungary or anyone leaving, just pointing out the fact Hungary's position right now is at odds with the US.

As you aptly observe:

NATO countries don't follow slavishly the US in every US incursion, but the countries not going along in certain policies doesn't undermine the defense pact itself. — ssu

Which, with failure in Ukraine, it this opting-out of US wars or US sanctions that would be likely to increase.

The defensive aspect of NATO is one thing, which I don't see anyone arguing Russia or China would actually attack NATO anyways.

What is at stake in this war in Ukraine is the imperialistic aspect of NATO, serving US interests. If countries weren't really forced to participate before it doesn't necessarily take much for them to start opting out in larger numbers.

If the US's geopolitical position is significantly eroded by this war then both costs and risks of participating in US intervention increase while benefits decrease.

Worse, as long as the war is "on" (not to mention the tensions in the South China Sea) the US cannot credibly say they will cause much trouble for other countries that get out of line. There is a window in which countries can radically shift geopolitical positions without much fear of being bombed by the US.

But worst of all, the sanctions have not only failed but created a parallel global economy absorbing everyone already under sanction (in particular Iran), but which any country (mostly in Asia but elsewhere too) can leverage in international relations both directly vis-a-vis the US (they "can go elsewhere") as well as in increasing collaboration with foes of the US (aka. China and Russia) knowing US retaliation is significantly blunted.

And this is not in anyway a new idea, but basically sanctions 101:

In a time when U.S. consistency and reliability is openly questioned by some of America’s closest allies, threats of permanent sanctions will draw more attention to the risks of being dependent on the U.S. financial system. America’s importance as an international financial hub will not disappear overnight, and neither will the reach of U.S. sanctions. If the U.S. comes to be seen as an untrustworthy custodian, there will be a slow and inexorable erosion of America’s role and influence.

Sanctions compare favorably with any other tool the U.S. has—and certainly very favorably to military action. Sanctions can help address real problems in the world, which is why the U.S. should not fritter them away. — Misusing U.S. Sanctions Will Sap Their Power, Blanc, 2017

Or even more prophetic:

A one-size-fits-all approach to foreign policy is bound to fail. But the trend is no less clear. While there will be those instances in which sanctions can help, either alone or more likely in conjunction with other tools, recent history strongly suggests that the potential of sanctions to contribute to American foreign policy will be modest—and that asking more of them than that promises to be counterproductive. — Economic Sanctions: Too Much of a Bad Thing, Haas, 1998

Yet not more than 18 months ago, US talking heads would regularly refer to sanctions as "the nuclear option" ... anyone calling them that now?

Likewise, anyone actually believe today that the US may bomb or invade them any moment if they crossed any US foreign policy lines?

Of course, it's possible the large majority of the world stays square in the US sphere of influence because they are so likeable, but if they don't then it definitely seems to me the US has invested their main imperial tools in Ukraine.

And for what? To (maybe) damage Russia enough so that Russia can't bully around neighbouring countries?

Ukraine is the tree in the US' imperial forest, and the way things are going they aren't even happy in their new tree house.

Masterful "soviet" propaganda schemes to appear weak... — ssu

Obviously you didn't get the satire.

The claim the Russians have a masterful "soviet" propaganda scheme machine going was to support the idea not only did Russia blow up their own pipelines but they went the extra several hundred miles to blow them up right on Denmark's border under NATO's nose ... and also used several tons of explosives for additional emphasis.

This has already been clearly described by many including people like Vlad Vexler, focusing on the shift from Soviet propaganda before the wall fell to Russian propaganda today. — Christoffer

And if you don't believe this wild conspiracy theory of Russian and essentially perfect, one may say masterful, covert opps and 5 dimensional propaganda move:

Bombing the pipeline while Germany is already dismantling their need for it has no function. Russia however, just as with their propaganda strategies, aims to split the west into conflicts with each other so as to not have a united front against Russia. That's their aim and it's well established. So, what does a bombing of Nordstream at this time? Russia directly pointed blame against Ukraine, then the west, then the US, just as they already do with other propaganda strategies. The intention is to seed doubt so that the west starts to blame each other. And you are among the ones who they play like a fiddle in order to spread this doubt. — Christoffer

Then you are the one who:

the one who's making a fool out of himself. You don't even understand the conspiracy rabbit hole you're stuck in. — Christoffer

Now, as for the single tank on parade. That's just common sense. Had they paraded their whole inventory the same Western talking heads laughing at a single tank would be going on about how insane it is to parade your entire inventory during a war (which it is ... and maybe why the Russians didn't do that).

However, what could actually be staged is Prigozhin's midnight comedy blowout theatre show, and when I point that out suddenly the idea Russia has some propaganda tricks up their sleeve is ludicrous and certainly the Russians couldn't put together a simple plan of telling the enemy what they want to hear so that their own propaganda networks seed your message for you and your enemy basically "trusts" one of your commanders and take everything he says at face value.

And if that's not the case, why is he still alive?

Nothing easier than arranging an "accident" in a war zone. When it started, maybe he had gone rogue or something, but it's been going on for months so at some point it's difficult to interpret people's actions that are on the same team as something other than team work.

Noticed the Russia-bellends have kept schtum in this thread as of late. Ukraine appears to be morphing into an Eastern European version of Israel. — Changeling

You mean we aren't doing victory laps over the capture of Bakhmut because we aren't "Russia-bellends" but view the war as an immense and easily prevented tragedy?

Or perhaps it's because our analysis is so spot on there's nothing much to add.

What have been my recent points?

1. A Ukrainian offensive would have all the problems (just a lot more because Russia has capabilities Ukraine lacks entirely) as do the Russian offensives. The difference being that Russia can attrit the Ukrainians with artillery and standoff munitions.

2. The latest weapons systems drip fed to Ukraine (aka. Western tanks and Patriot missiles) would fail to deliver any meaningful change on the battlefield and the talk would immediately move on to the next weapons system (aka. the F-16s).

3. Sanctions continue to not collapse the Russian economy or cause some new Russian capitalist revolution.

4. For these and many more reasons (such as Russia heavily fortifying their position for an entire year), it is essentially impossible for Ukraine to remove Russian forces from all the previously held Ukrainian territory, and even trying would cost hundreds of thousands of lives and be unlikely to succeed; in the unlikely event it did succeed the war would still not be over and the tragedy would simply continue into the next chapter.

5. Nuclear blackmail does work, which is what explains NATO not intervening directly or "escalating" with the weapon systems that Ukraine would actually need to win.

6. Diplomatic resolution is the only remotely possible end to this conflict and continued fighting erodes Ukraine's negotiating position rather than strengthens it.

7. The idea sacrificing Ukraine to harm Russia makes the US and/or Europe "safer" is of dubious moral foundation and highly speculative if that's even happening. Historically, winning a war, and in many cases even losing a war, makes a country far stronger militarily, rather than weaker, and there is no evidence this case is an exception.

The only thing to add to this analysis is:

A. That not only has Russia conquered Bakhmut but they've done so with mercenaries.

If the Western narrative is true that Russia uses "waves" of cannon fodder, then that just fixes the other part of the Western narrative that these mercenaries are all psychopathic criminals.

Whereas the truth is Wagner has proven to be efficient and the people upset about prisoners winning freedom by fighting would likely be far more upset about more people they know dying.

A lot of these mercenaries are foreigners, who will continue to signup insofar as Russia is winning.

B. Western equipment has changed nothing and is starting to be destroyed which is a great advertisement for the Russian arms industry, the second major industry in Russia after oil and gas.

To make things even worse, there's interviews with Ukrainian soldiers describing Russian tanks super difficult to deal with and a major reason for retreating from Bakhmut. We can conclude from this that not only has Russia not run out of tanks (actually has more than that 1 tank on parade) but they've become proficient at the combined arms tactics needed to counter anti-tank missiles, other tanks, mines, APC's and so on.

C. If anything is some masterful "soviet" propaganda scheme, it would be Prigozhin's v-blogging adventure. And if not Soviet (presumably if Soviet propaganda methods were so effective they'd still be around), a single tank on parade and some mercenary businessman continuously complaining about ammunition is just lifted directly out of an old book popular among war planners:

Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. — Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

I believe even some Western war military academies have copies of this manual.

Thanks for the work.

Calm down. You're crossing a line here. — Baden

I actually miss Olivier5 calling me a Russian agent.

Not only was it comedy gold but of great insight into how people maintain their world view.

And to be fair, I did just liken discussing with to sifting through the debris of a vapid soul, as a retort to being called:

A normal useful idiot for Russia basically. — Christoffer

"Go take your medicine or whatever" is just the banalist of weak sauce at that point in the exchange.

The weakest of sauces.

And at least Olivier5 was discussing the issues of import: was the war justified, is the price worth it, can Ukraine win, is Ukraine winning, what would be a win, etc.

We had different opinions, but it did move the conversation forward on the key issues.

I have already described three times now what the possible motives are, but you don't care. Your mind seems to wander through conspiracy-land being both confused and paranoid. — Christoffer

You do realise you're the one proposing the conspiracy theory that the Russian did in secret (i.e. conspired) to blow up their own pipeline, a crime against property holders in both the EU and Russia.

I'm pointing out the undisputed fact (what the US president said on live television, location of the attacks, minimum bound on how much explosives were used, control of the crime scene, lack of material evidence etc.) your conspiracy theory doesn't even address.

Whereas my position relative these known facts is:

1. Sure, both the US and Russia had the means to carry out such an attack, both have ships that regularly patrol and carry out manoeuvres in the the Baltic and would have reason to be there.
2. I do not deny the intra-NATO tensions that would arise if the pipes blew up and people suspected the US did it.
3. It's totally reasonable to primarily suspect the US considering the US president publicly promised to "end" the pipelines if Russia invaded.
4. So, if it was Russia and they did it because it benefits them ... then obviously it was pretty dumb for the US to basically set themselves up for being an obvious suspect (some would even go so far as to say the party that overtly promised to do the thing that then happened would be the lead suspect in any competent criminal investigation).
5. There's a whole bunch of motivations (decades of economic leverage) we'd need to believe the Russians don't care about, and to such an extreme degree that they don't even mitigate the damage to the pipes ... don't even take advantage of the president's words to carry out a lesser attack and closer to their border in seas they control.

I'm not saying I know what happened. When material evidence of the crime scene is available, even then I don't suspect I'd come to any strong conclusions as people who's job it is to deceive with billions of dollars and / or rubbles at their disposal may very well succeed in deceiving me.

It's you who claims to have knowledge of the conspiracy to the level of confidence:

It was rigorously verified using a former Navy operative in England and through advanced satellite tracking. With confirmation from navy intelligence officers going over the material, simply concluding "With this evidence it is much more clear who was responsible". — Christoffer

You're the one with the conspiracy theory that was "rigorously verified" and makes clear "who was responsible".

I subject your conspiracy theory to critical scrutiny ... and that somehow makes me the conspiracy theorist?

Which, is a label I don't actually mind ... the whole reason we have a long list of laws with the word "conspiracy" in it is because conspiracies do in fact happen and for them to be uncovered someone at some point needs to theorise as to what may have conspired, such as what you are doing vis-a-vis the Nord Stream "sabotage", which, I think is worth mentioning it's being called "sabotage" instead of "terrorism" because not a single brown person has been alleged to be involved in any of the theories proposed so far (Ukraine, Russia, US, Poland ... all white people, so blowing shit up for political pressure is all of a sudden the work of "la di da fancy dancy saboteurs").

Also notable, on the subject of meaning, the sentence "With this evidence it is much more clear who was responsible" could actually mean it's obviously the US that's responsible, for all we know, he doesn't actually say.

Why would I agree that the US had the opportunity or reason to? I specifically gave a motivation as to why the US wouldn't, which, as with everything else just wooshes right over your head. — Christoffer

Yes ... so ... why did the US president first threaten to put an end to the pipeline and then when challenged double down and "promised" the world they would bring an end to it and then tripling down with the assurance that they for sure could be able to do it?

What's the motivation to threaten to do something you have no motivation to do?

Additionally, Nord Stream 1 continued to operate and it was the West accusing Russia of purposefully kneecapping the flow and "weaponising" the gas, so if your theory is based on Germany deciding all by themselves to fully cut themselves as permanently as possible from Russian gas, that's not what happened, and therefore no need to "end" the pipelines, and Russia (seeing this permanent refusal of gas supplies from Russia, which no competent analyst of international relations would conclude the policy would be "permanent", if it existed at all, which it didn't as Germany kept on buying whatever came through Nord Stream 1) saw the only value in the pipes remaining to be to blow them up to throw shade on the Americans ... none of that stacks up because at no point did Germany have a policy to disconnect entirely and in as permanent way as possible from Russian gas, and even if Germany did have such a policy no credible analyst would conclude a country announcing something "permanent" to actually be permanent. Things change.

You never fucking understand what hindsight bias is, do you? And you never understand that your entire argument is based on what you believe his speech meant. — Christoffer

Really? You really find the following words ambiguous?

Speaking at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Biden said, "If Russia invades... again, then there will be longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."

When asked how he would do that, he responded, "I promise you we will be able to do it." — Reuters

Ok, well ... what does he mean then?

Enlighten us.

↪boethius, nice story, sort of. I suppose you'd have the UN being "war-mongers". — jorndoe

What story?

At no point did I recount a story.

What I did was outline the key questions a story that it was the Russians would need to at least address to be a minimum credible.

The fact that it's not an easy story to tell is a fact not some counter-story.

Why is it difficult?

First, the Russians not-attacking their own stuff has several advantages:

1. They get to keep their stuff and who knows what use it may have in the future. True, Russia is going "all in" with China, but even then have leverage to potentially be able to sell gas to Germany in the future is still useful even if China remains the main buyer and relations with China are good: every bit of leverage allows increase pressure on the price. Indeed, before the attacks the accusation from the West was Putin was "weaponising" the gas exports. So if this accusation was true ... why wouldn't he continue to do that? Why voluntarily giveu-p a "weapon" in a time of war?

2. Biden "promised" the world he would "end" the pipelines if Russia invaded Ukraine. So, not-attacking the pipelines puts the US in the position of being weak if they don't fulfil their promise ... and if they do, then Russia would get all the benefits is going on about but not only without any of the risks but the added benefit that, if not the general public, non-US NATO intelligence are far more likely to conclude it was the US, if it was actually the US.

Which us to the operational parameters. These attacks were not some casual jaunt through a meadow and "just so happens" a ton of explosives was handy for some spontaneous vandalism.

It's a complex operation and the risks of things going wrong is very real.

So, the story that Russia attacked the pipelines not only needs to completely ignore the leverage some 20 billion dollars of infrastructure that takes decades to build and supplies a resource of fundamental importance (that for the short term benefit of creating intra-NATO suspicions Russia is willing to permanently give up immense leverage in all their international relations for the next decades) but that the Russians would also conclude that Biden literally stating they would "end" the pipelines was not enough to create the aura of suspicion they are seeking, but they need to use enough explosive to guarantee complete destruction of the pipes as well as do it right under NATO's nose on the marine border of Denmark and Sweden ... rather than basically any point between there and Russia.

And control of the crime scene in this sort of operation is always of immense benefit, as there's never any guarantee the operation isn't a complete clusterfuck and there's always a threshold of clusterfuckuppery which is so fucked it can't be spun as "enemy schemes". The divers and / or mini-sub could die or then nearly die and NATO goes out and pulls these corpses / near corpses from the water.

Likewise, in this sort of game, you cannot know your opponents capabilities. What if a US sub shadows the entire Russian operation and then NATO goes and "discovers" these explosives before they blow. There's a real possibility of getting caught red handed in this sort of operation ... unless you do it in waters you control and can easily control the crime scene afterwards as well ... you know, right in the middle of all your sonar and listening devices tracking everything that goes through Denmark (if you're the US) so you can be pretty damn certain no one else is around and also be sure no one goes and checks anything out ... something you couldn't at all guarantee if you were Russia doing the operation right in the middle of the US' backyard.

We're talking about massive operational risks with massive geopolitical implications and risk of embarrassment if anything goes wrong.

So not only does the idea the Russians did it make no sense on pretty much every point but to even entertain the idea we need to just suddenly forget the US is a Naval superpower with all sorts of surveillance capabilities with high motivation to track anything going near and through the Danish straights ... and the whole reason Russia launches subs from the flipping arctic is just paranoia because Russia could just sale right up to Denmark and blow shit up this whole time with the only line of defence some retired Swedish captain on an island with a radio and a hobby or some bullshit along those lines.

And on-top of all the suspension of disbelief to even listen with a straight face to such a story, we also need to believe that anyone pointing out the US president literally "promising" to end the pipeline is somehow a conspiracy theory to discuss what someone says to a journalist on television.

You are still unable to understand that this does not equal guilt of the bombing. — Christoffer

You're position is literally:

This was reported by a collaboration between top investigative journalists in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. It was rigorously verified using a former Navy operative in England and through advanced satellite tracking. With confirmation from navy intelligence officers going over the material, simply concluding "With this evidence it is much more clear who was responsible". — Christoffer

Now you're walking back from "much more clear who was responsible" to "conjecture".

I have already described three times now what the possible motives are, but you don't care. Your mind seems to wander through conspiracy-land being both confused and paranoid. — Christoffer

We don't disagree what Russia's motives would be. I literally say:

For the Russians, attacking their own pipelines would be a PR thing — boethius

What you fail to do is account for the undisputed fact the US threatened to blow up the pipelines.

If you want to propose an alternate theory, you need to take into account the undisputed facts.

You need to say "I have this theory that it was the Russians that conspired to blow up the pipelines and make it look like the US did it by taking advantage of the fact the US said they would do it, all while totally not being a conspiracy theorist conjecturing about this conspiracy theory I have" (or is it only a "conspiracy theory" if it's not the Russians somehow?).

You do not even have the beginnings of a proposal.

I get it, Western media simply ignores the US president threatening to blow up the pipeline as there's simply no way to fit it into a pleasant narrative: either the US president means what he says, threatened to blow up the pipeline and then did exactly that to maintain the credibility of the US' word ... or then he's a moron that makes empty threats that the opponents of the US can easily take advantage of.

So, because the Western media ignore this obviously pertinent fact you think that's "smart".

Blowing up the pipeline had no purpose for the US when the invasion had already had the effect of moving Germany and Europe away from dependency on Russia. The changeover was already happening so there's no point in bombing a pipeline and hurting allies. Russia, however, have everything to win by the chaos it produces. You are just blaming the US because it rhymes with your personal opinions. — Christoffer

So ... why would the US threaten to blow up pipeline if it serves no purpose?

Even in the realm of conjecture, you're idea should cohere with the known facts.

As I say above, if you're theory is the Russian's did it and Biden is a moron for doing the Russians the favour of making empty threats about the pipeline, I don't have a problem with that theory. Conjecture all you want Russia is the master of strategy and perception and US officials are dunces that have no idea what they are talking about or why.

For, if it was the Russians, the only reason this pipeline thing causes the:

the intended effect, you're here playing into exactly what Russia wants to have; the west fractured by gullible people and muddying the waters to the point that when there's even tangible evidence of the act you continue to push for your personal opinions, using every bias and fallacy possible. — Christoffer

Is only because the US president threatened to blow up the pipelines in Public.

So, at least start your presentation with "Yes, the US did threaten to 'end' European infrastructure, and that wasn't a good idea to threaten the interests of your own allies, the US should of course respect the sovereignty of Germany to decide for themselves to buy Russian gas or not, which is what this whole war is about supporting sovereignty so just the threat on this infrastructure and deciding things for the Germans, however right the outcome is, already, in itself, is going to cause unneeded tensions between allies ... but even worse! sets the stage for crafty ol' Putin to take advantage of this empty threat and blowup the pipeline himself as everyone will for sure think it was the US considering they threatened, actually more than threatened, promised! to 'end it'."

For someone who does so much mental gymnastics, you're not doing nearly enough to avoid the obvious conclusion which is:

The US president saying:

We will bring an end to it. I promise you. We will be able to do it.
— the president of America

Sure, doesn't prove who did it, but declaring you'll "end" something and then that very thing you promised you'd end does get ended, results in two possibilities:

1. You did it, just like you said you would.
2. You're a fucking moron. — boethius

Which, again, where is the disagreement?

We both agree both the US and Russia had opportunity to blow up the pipeline.

If it wasn't the US then how do avoid the conclusion that Biden is a fucking moron for threatening to do it before hand ... if it actually benefits Russia in their Soviet style perception mastery?

No, what I refer is that navy and military investigators, as well as independent ones who went over what the journalists found agreed that what they found is significant. That is a confirmation of it being important, it doesn't mean this investigation is in any form of alliance with these military officals and investigators. It's like you don't even attempt to understand any of this but just boil everything that is said down to some unintelligent interpretation. It's like speaking to a child. — Christoffer

Discussing with you is like shifting through the debris of a vapid soul.

It is not worth my time for something as low stakes as the question of whether Russian ships (civilian, military, covert) are in the Baltic doing what they would normally be doing in peace, and much more-so in war time.

However, since no one is debating at the moment anything remotely important (such as if the cost of the war to Ukraine is worth the benefits so far or then expected benefits in the future and if whether the Western policy to supply is in Ukraine's interest, the West's interest or then just the arms suppliers interest) I will pick apart your delusions for the benefit of the casual follower to this discussion.

"lead suspect" is something you have made up. In no way is the US any lead suspect other than through Russian propaganda and people gullible enough to eat that propaganda without a second thought. It's this presumption that makes you acting out bias towards what you already believe, and me only referring to the evidence at hand. — Christoffer

Sure, I have zero problem defending that I am defining the US as the lead suspect.

In any crime, someone who credibly states they intend to do that crime beforehand makes themselves the lead suspect.

You accuse me of ignoring this "important evidence" of some messages or whatever, while completely ignoring a party to this affair literally declaring their intention to end the pipeline.

To make a credible case it was someone else, you need to first explain why this threat by the US was not actually credible and we should dismiss it. For example, perhaps it was a bluff ... or perhaps it wasn't a bluff but the US and Russia were in a race to blow up the pipelines first and Russia just so happened to win that race because they are so competent and crafty.

If it was a bluff, then you're simply agreeing with my position at the start of this discussion with you:

Sure, doesn't prove who did it, but declaring you'll "end" something and then that very thing you promised you'd end does get ended, results in two possibilities:

1. You did it, just like you said you would.
2. You're a fucking moron. — boethius

For, if it's actually in Russia's interest to blowup the pipeline because they are "masters of perception" a la Soviet:

The whole idea behind it being a post-soviet propaganda system that doesn't act on trying to convince Russia to be right, they only need to plant doubt into populations of other nations in order to get them into conflict with each other instead of focusing on Russia. It's the foundation for why Russia wanted Trump to win. Vlad Vexler has gone into those things describing the difference between propaganda before the wall fell and after. — Christoffer

Then obviously, if making a bluff to blow up the pipeline plays right into the hands of the "Vlexler" you are a complete fucking moron for making that bluff, as it's literally blown up in your face.

Now, if it wasn't a bluff why didn't the US blow up the pipelines before Russia, or just not get around to it, forcing Russia's hand to blow up their own pipelines?

If you're argument is "Biden's a fucking moron, delusional senile ol' goat that is liable to say whatever comes into his mind on live television and his words should be ignored, just unfortunately in this situation the damage of the president's incompetence is like super high because a lot of people will mistakingly assume US blew up the pipelines because the US president basically said that and the motive is clear" then you have no disagreement from me. Biden being a senile imbecile that was hallucinating when he was talking about "ending" the pipelines and then Russia took advantage of that blunder to cause strife and consternation is as plausible a theory as the US did it.

We are not, in fact, in disagreement. You just don't want to call a spade a spade or then offer some other theory as to what Biden's words meant, why they don't matter, or why did matter but the Russians got to same plan first ... in which case why is it in Russia's favour if the US was planning to do the exact same thing?

Do the wretched Ruskies not have access to a stopcock somewhere, if they want to cut off the flow? — unenlightened

Nord stream 2 never got permission to open from the Germans, so it's difficult to see a motive for the Russians blowing it up.

Nord Stream 1 wasn't flowing because of "turbine maintenance" depending on Seimans who sent them to Canada who couldn't send them back to Russia due to sanctions, which the Western media assumed was bullshit.

Which is the central problem behind the idea the Russian's blew up their own pipelines, as there was far less destructive means to shut them down, restrict gas supplies while also keeping the leverage on the table in the future.

Indeed, even if we elaborate the scenario where the Russians wanted to take advantage of the US stating they'd "end" the pipelines (for example to create tensions in NATO), it's difficult to imagine any rational for blowing up both Nord Stream 1 and 2 and so destructively. You could get largely the same result by blowing up only one of four the pipelines, create the same tensions and keep 3 quarters of the leverage.

And not only is there little reason to blow up all the pipelines, but there's degrees of destruction to choose from. There would be little reason to use so much explosives:

The lawmaker was also told that more than 1,000 pounds of "military grade" explosives were used by the perpetrators. — 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, wikipedia

If it was the Russians and they used a measly 100 pounds of explosives to cause repairable leaks, would there really be a risk people find that a non-credible attack?

For the Russians, attacking their own pipelines would be a PR thing, there would be no fundamental motivation to destroy their own stuff in a non-repairable way, so you really need to get to very advanced levels of PR kung fu to come up with a model where the Russians conclude not only is it a good idea to attack all the pipes, but do it so close to Denmark and Sweden (rather than somewhere they could get to and control the crime scene first), and in such a destructive way.

The findings by the investigative journalists that were just released. Are you illiterate or just ignorant? — Christoffer

You seem to claim this is some sort of backup for NATO's claims.

You literally state:

With confirmation from navy intelligence officers going over the material, simply concluding "With this evidence it is much more clear who was responsible". — Christoffer

But if you want to pretend there's some "independent journalism" that is stronger evidence than the lead suspect saying they will do exactly this thing, believe what you want to believe.

That's the whole point of suddenly finding Russian ships are in the Baltic is exactly for people like you who find this a surprising fact.

If you actually lived on the baltic (as I do) it's considerably less surprising.

I did not doubt Russia had opportunity to blow up their own pipelines before. Finding out there are Russian ships "actually in the Baltic, including military ships!!!" is literally zero new information.

Both the US and Russia have opportunity. The only thing worth analysing with the information we have (absent actual material evidence, which even then wouldn't be conclusive considering the means of the two suspects, but at least interesting) is motive and intent.

If you want to argue the US literally declaring their motive and intent on television is weaker than speculations as to Russia's motive, go ahead and make that argument.

If you want to continue to make the case that Russia has ships and Russia's ships sometimes ship through busy shipping lanes, it was not previously in doubt.

No, it's about their behavior and their function. Once again, dig into the actual findings instead of continuing this biased charade. — Christoffer

What findings?

You literally just said yourself investigation is "on-going" so they'd be stupid to release any actual evidence that would allow the culprits to get their stories straight.

You can't have it both ways, saying the lack of countries releasing evidence on the one hand is investigators being "smart" and on the other the very same countries releasing "some evidence" that tells you what you want to hear are "findings".

The evidence of Russian ships being in the Baltic is poor even if we assume it's true. Where else would they be?

If it merely establishes that Russia had opportunity to blow up their own pipeline, no one's ever disputed that.

That's not the evidence, maybe you should just shut up and watch it in detail before guessing what it's about. Thinking this is about ships in a busy shipping lane just shows how ignorant you are. — Christoffer

The evidence you are talking about is literally ships near the scene of the crime.

Civilian ships, military ships, covert ships. Any kind of ship with any kind of person for any kind of purpose is not surprising to be in a busy shipping lane.

How would Russian civilian, military, covert ships go to and from St. Petersburg and the Atlantic?

Literally right through Danish straights.

Now, in terms of ignorance, you seem to believe:

Spy satellites that something like CIA uses require specific targets. They are super-advanced with high-resolution resolution, but you can't go back in time and just pull out images from all around the globe and you could do it less for tracking an object if you didn't know its location in the first place. — Christoffer

There are civilian satellite photography taken every day of the entire earth that you can purchase.

And you think CIA spy satellites would need a "specific target" to track something as large as a ship in critical waters in the heart of NATO ... during a war in the region?

But let's put that aside, because you literally state:

Uhm... because ongoing investigations do not share such things? There are a number of investigations going on as well. Have you ever heard of investigations sharing evidence in real time? That's a good way for the perps to adjust their stories and prepare for when they're caught. Not a good strategy of justice, which is why such things aren't publically exposed.

And if you don't trust NATO you can check other people investigating. Like, for instance, what I've referred to. — Christoffer

So, if the investigation hasn't shared all it's evidence, and that's just normal, why would we come to any conclusions?

The problem here is these countries (who have material evidence) coming out with partial evidence without presenting the rest, so we can't see if it even coheres with the material evidence they possess. Presenting partial evidence pointing to one party means absolutely nothing other than trying to shape the narrative for people who want / need to believe it wasn't the Americans (such as giving a plausible basis for European policy makers to continue to be bitches; not that there's any risk of them being something other than bitches, but this way is more comfortable for them compared to considering the possibility the US does not have Europe's interests at heart, but rather their own interests ... surprisingly close to exactly what they keep saying for the last 5 decades to explain nearly all of their policies; as crazy as it sounds, people could just mean what they say sometimes, such as "protecting US interests" means "protecting US interests" and not European interests).

Bad faith at best, fraud at worst (if we're pretending to be in court and 'normy' laws apply to the parties involved).

And isn't Denmark coming out with statements such as:

Denmark’s overall military command authority confirmed to the Financial Times that it had taken 26 pictures of the special Russian ship SS-750, which had a rescue mini-submarine on board, on September 22 to the east of the Danish island of Bornholm, close to where the sabotage of the twin pipelines took place. — Financial Times

Doing exactly what you say is incompetent for investigators to do?

Isn't that a ....

a good way for the perps to adjust their stories and prepare for when they're caught. Not a good strategy of justice, which is why such things aren't publically exposed. — Christoffer

If anything you seem to be criticising the investigation.

What you haven't done is point to any evidence even remotely stronger than the US President publicly declaring his intention to "end" the pipeline.

If you think some stories of ships in the Baltic (where we'd very much expect them to be, including military and covert ships) is somehow stronger evidence, all while chocking up the lack of presenting the material evidence as "a good strategy of justice" but coming to conclusions anyways, that's called: believing what you want to believe.

Actual tracking of Russian operatives connected to the time of the explosion is stronger evidence. What you are doing is conjecture. Get some basic justice knowledge if you want to conclude what is "strong evidence". — Christoffer

You are completely delusional.

Placing someone where they would likely be (a busy shipping lane) = weak evidence.

Someone threatening to do something, indeed promising to do it = strong evidence.

Purposefully withholding evidence (such as all the material evidence of a crime scene) while accusing someone of a crime = fraud.

And speaking of court, if you want to argue on that basis, "who dun it?" we cannot say conclusively based on the available evidence, but what we can know in this "court" you are imagining, is that prosecutors purposefully withholding evidence is a serious procedural violation (mistrial at best) and arguably fraud.

NATO has access to the crime scene ... so why don't we see pictures of the crime scene, reconstruction of the explosive devices, any basic investigatory work at all?

For these claims to be something other than propaganda, the material evidence should be presented.

Of course, people could still say it was a setup, doesn't necessarily resolve anything, but the material evidence should be consistent with this story that the explosives were laid a few days before (or then a pretty good explanation of how the Russians faked how long the explosives were there) if that's what NATO is claiming.

No prosecutors (outside a circus court) could ever possibly get away with making a case while not only making zero effort to make their story consistent with the material evidence of the crime scene ... but hiding all the material evidence of the crime scene to boot.

In terms of criminal process, it's just dumb.

NATO has not made a case, they've thrown a bone to the people who want / need to believe it wasn't the Americans ... in a way that increases, rather than decreases, the suspicion it was the Americans to any attentive observer.

Now, if we had seen pictures of the crime scene, catalogue of the materials used, reconstruction of the devices, would it prove conclusively who did it? No. But it would at least be a plausibly good faith investigatory process where we could argue based on actual facts of the actual crime scene.