Russia's War Against Ukraine

[al_infierno]

[Gusington]

^I just posted that right above you (link to Reuters) - just without the massive image

[JasonPratt]

And without the HOI joke. ;) (Al was making a meme of it with Mematic.)

[al_infierno]

^ I didn't actually make the meme, but yeah I posted it for the sweet lulz  O0

[Gusington]

'Scraping the barrel'  :dreamer:

[JasonPratt]

This Metro article (via MSN) has a weird formatting designed for extra clickthrus, so I'll post the combined text below for convenience.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-facing-a-coup-after-his-closest-allies-accept-they-ve-lost-the-war/ss-AAXtosq?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=8b1555688be3415f8c6bcecae01879d7#image=1

Putin 'facing a coup after his closest allies accept they've lost the war'

Vladimir Putin's top security officials think the war in Ukraine is 'lost', making the chances of a coup more likely, an analyst in Moscow says. The chances of the Russian tyrant launching a nuclear strike are receding as it is likely people would refuse to carry out his order.

That's according to expert and investigative journalist Christo Grozev, who suggests Putin is losing his grip on power. He says leading officials are unlikely to obey Putin's commands to launch nukes as they don't trust he will still be in power in three months time. 'I think that it is the informed elite within the security forces who understand that the war is lost,' Grozev told Radio Liberty.

He said Putin's inner circle understand the president would need a full mass mobilisation to win the war, but this would cause a 'social explosion' in Russia. Some hardliners may pressure for use of nuclear or chemical weapons, Grozev warned. But others will say 'enough is enough' and 'it is better not to waste another 10,000 lives of our soldiers and officers'.
Grozev, lead Russia investigator for investigative journalist group Bellingcat, said one or more of the 'five hands' needed to launch Russia's nukes could end up defying Putin. 'And this refusal will be the trigger, most likely, a coup d'état, because after the refusal to comply with the order of the king, everything will go down very quickly,' he added. 'If Putin decides to give an order to use nuclear weapons, he must be sure that everyone along the chain will carry out this order'. If one person does not comply, Grozev says this will be a 'signal of insubordination' which could lead to the 'death of Putin'. 'So until he is sure that everyone will comply, he will not give this order,' he added. It is known that defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the defence staff Valery Gerasimov would both need to sanction a nuclear strike.

The journalist said senior figures from the FSB security agency and the GRU military intelligence organisation are preparing for life after Putin. He said the 'FSB elite' knows exactly how many Russian troops have died in Ukraine and knows that the loved ones of the dead or missing 'do not stop asking questions'. 'They know that this situation will eventually get out of hand,' Grozev added. 'This is already a kind of betrayal by these people, because they do not follow the ideological orders of the Kremlin, but are preparing for an alternative reality'.

No link to the original Radio Liberty article, unfortunately; if someone less lazy busy than I am wants to find and link it, yay?

[FarAway Sooner]

As to opening ports what would the legality be of escorting WFP hired ships even if they can't fly the UN flag.  I was wondering if an end run could be done by using an autonomous ECOSOC arm but Russia is one of the controlling members.  If there is an NGO big enough can escorts be provided or for countries sending ships?   Stream of thought.

I forget the name of the treaty, but Turkey is the enforcer for a policy that allows them to close the Bosphorous Straits to all military ships under certain circumstances (this is one of them).  Russian warships already docked at Sevastopol can remain there, but the Turks aren't allowing any more warships (of any nationality) into the Black Sea.  Closing the straits to (primarily Russian) warships was one of the first significant diplomatic developments that immediately followed the start of hostilities in Ukraine.

I could be wrong, but I can't imagine that NATO wants to tackle that diplomatic imbroglio just to get a few dozen Ukrainian wheat shipments out via boats.  It's theoretically possible, but I suspect they have bigger fish to fry.

[FarAway Sooner]

In terms of raising the age limit, I wonder whether this is a military move to supply combat troops in Ukraine, or whether this is intended more as an internal political stunt to field lots of old men to serve in units stationed on the "newly threatened Swedish and Finnish borders". 

I think it has more utility than "sending 45 year old men to the Donbas to operate highly technical weapons systems."  That, or it's a ploy to hire thousands and thousands of 30-40 year old non-Russian volunteers (e.g., mercenaries) to serve in their army.

From a practical, "preserve the regime" viewpoint, what Putin and Cronies need to be doing right now is figuring out how to position a ceasefire and withdrawal back to early 2022 battle lines as "mission accomplished" for their internal politics while trying to secure a ceasefire such that Putin and his army can remain secure within their own borders. 

The fact that they seem to be doing neither of those things indicates just how dysfunctional the whole Russian state has become.

[CaptainKoloth]

Some things I've been wondering about:

It is by now quite evident that the Russian operational performance in Ukraine has been astonishingly bad relative to expectations. Given the shocking extent of these failures, I think discussion of the root causes of this have been nearly absent, even in the defense press, outside of analyzing many specific instances (e.g. shootdowns) and the same vague generalities that have percolated everywhere by now (e.g. drones good, the tank is dead!). I'm interested in drilling down to the next level on this.

There are two really interesting questions that I think have barely been addressed anywhere in detail:

1) The fact that the Russians seem barely to have practiced or effected any SEAD or DEAD is astonishing. How could this be? Page 1, Chapter 1, of the (fictional) "How to Go to War" textbook is taking out the enemy's air defenses. How did the Russians fail to perform effective SEAD, or even seem to try particularly hard? I've seen speculation that they have fired a bunch of Kh-31s, the Ukranians are probably not emitting unless they're about to fire, but still, the total lack of Russian air superiority, the fact that Ukranian airbases and air defenses are still operating, I find to be an astonishing mark of incompetence on the part of the Russian Air Force. I've seen many possible explanations- lack of training and flight hours, the Ukranians practicing good EMCON, lack of effective planning and intelligence, Russian training primarily against NATO doctrine which is much more fighter-centric, etc. No doubt the "true" answer is some combination of all of these and perhaps more factors, but the fact that the world's second-largest air force is unable to effectively suppress the 27th largest (if my numbers are correct) after multiple months of high-intensity combat would have been unthinkable just weeks ago.

2) Was Russian combined arms doctrine and performance always this bad? Had the Cold War gone hot in the 1970s or 1980s, I would expect that the Russians would have faced an even more effective, numerous, and entrenched opponent than they face now. Would they have bogged down even more quickly without resorting to tactical nuclear weapons? Or are we seeing the result of corruption and rot particular to the Putin era? Russian doctrine always involved much more minimal training and maximum quantity- if their tanks had been rolling across the Fulda Gap in the 1980s, would we have seem the same mix of untrained conscripts, poor joint services planning and action, failure to act effectively against ATGMs and secure air superiority, poor intelligence, leadership etc., or are those more likely to be more recent "features" of the Russian Army as opposed to the Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces of that time? Was the Soviet army of the time a paper tiger without resorting to use of nuclear weapons?

Again, these questions probably can't be answered for decades, if ever, but they seem very interesting to me, and they barely seem to have invited any discussion anywhere. Thoughts?

[Gusington]

Putting it really simplistically I think the rot you mention began in the 1980s and has been exacerbated by Putin's reign.

[W8taminute]

Have you ever played a PBEM game with your friends and purposely thrown your game due to a secret agreement with one of your friends?

[Sir Slash]

Wait. In Russia you can sign-up for the military?  :o  I thought they handled all that for you, whether you wanted them to or not.  :hide:

[al_infierno]

Have you ever played a PBEM game with your friends and purposely thrown your game due to a secret agreement with one of your friends?

  Or conversely, a PBEM game where a player sneakily plugs themselves into 2 different nation slots and uses the secondary nation as a puppet for the main one.

"Hey, who's this Vladimir_Jinping guy and why is he playing both Russia and China!?"

[W8taminute]

Have you ever played a PBEM game with your friends and purposely thrown your game due to a secret agreement with one of your friends?

  Or conversely, a PBEM game where a player sneakily plugs themselves into 2 different nation slots and uses the secondary nation as a puppet for the main one.

"Hey, who's this Vladimir_Jinping guy and why is he playing both Russia and China!?"

Good point!

[MengJiao]

Some things I've been wondering about:

It is by now quite evident that the Russian operational performance in Ukraine has been astonishingly bad relative to expectations. Given the shocking extent of these failures, I think discussion of the root causes of this have been nearly absent, even in the defense press, outside of analyzing many specific instances (e.g. shootdowns) and the same vague generalities that have percolated everywhere by now (e.g. drones good, the tank is dead!). I'm interested in drilling down to the next level on this.

There are two really interesting questions that I think have barely been addressed anywhere in detail:

1) The fact that the Russians seem barely to have practiced or effected any SEAD or DEAD is astonishing. How could this be? Page 1, Chapter 1, of the (fictional) "How to Go to War" textbook is taking out the enemy's air defenses. How did the Russians fail to perform effective SEAD, or even seem to try particularly hard? I've seen speculation that they have fired a bunch of Kh-31s, the Ukranians are probably not emitting unless they're about to fire, but still, the total lack of Russian air superiority, the fact that Ukranian airbases and air defenses are still operating, I find to be an astonishing mark of incompetence on the part of the Russian Air Force. I've seen many possible explanations- lack of training and flight hours, the Ukranians practicing good EMCON, lack of effective planning and intelligence, Russian training primarily against NATO doctrine which is much more fighter-centric, etc. No doubt the "true" answer is some combination of all of these and perhaps more factors, but the fact that the world's second-largest air force is unable to effectively suppress the 27th largest (if my numbers are correct) after multiple months of high-intensity combat would have been unthinkable just weeks ago.

2) Was Russian combined arms doctrine and performance always this bad? Had the Cold War gone hot in the 1970s or 1980s, I would expect that the Russians would have faced an even more effective, numerous, and entrenched opponent than they face now. Would they have bogged down even more quickly without resorting to tactical nuclear weapons? Or are we seeing the result of corruption and rot particular to the Putin era? Russian doctrine always involved much more minimal training and maximum quantity- if their tanks had been rolling across the Fulda Gap in the 1980s, would we have seem the same mix of untrained conscripts, poor joint services planning and action, failure to act effectively against ATGMs and secure air superiority, poor intelligence, leadership etc., or are those more likely to be more recent "features" of the Russian Army as opposed to the Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces of that time? Was the Soviet army of the time a paper tiger without resorting to use of nuclear weapons?

Again, these questions probably can't be answered for decades, if ever, but they seem very interesting to me, and they barely seem to have invited any discussion anywhere. Thoughts?

  One thing that keeps coming up is that the Russians trounced Ukraine in all departments in 2014 -- killing their generals, conducting a perfect electronic war so on.  Then the US started training the Ukrainians.
So two things might have happened overall: 1) the Russians assumed things would go like 2014
and 2) the Ukrainians -- having been badly beaten in 2014 had had 8 years to get ready to change.
An additional problem for the Russians was the pure scale of the attack on Ukraine -- immense compared to blasting Aleppo or Georgia or Chechenya or the Crimea.  They did not
adjust for that or for the possibility that the Ukrainians would have learned from their defeats in 2014.  I'm not sure why the Russian air force has not obliterated the Ukrainian Air force --
maybe because the Ukrainians worked on surviving early on and hoped just being around would work okay, ie prioritizing survival might have been a good plan.