Russia's War Against Ukraine

[Uberhaus]

This will be very painful for the Russian economy:  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60542433

The EU, US and their allies have agreed to cut off a number of Russian banks from the main international payment system, Swift.

The assets of Russia's central bank will also be frozen, limiting Russia's ability to access its overseas reserves.

Excluding certain Russian banks from the Swift system used for trillions of dollars-worth of transactions will hit the economy hard - and in the words of the White House, it will make the country rely on "the telephone or a fax machine" to make payments.

This is only a slight exaggeration. There are workarounds to Swift but none which are as efficient.

Only one country has been cut out in the past - Iran - which resulted in it losing 30% of its foreign trade.

On the battlefield, the Ukranians have been underestimated by the Russians.  However, we would do them a disservice by not acknowledging that the Russians are not spent yet and have not committed all of their forces.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60539113

Ed Arnold, an expert on European security at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), describes Russia's initial assault as "underwhelming" and "slower than expected".

He points to a number of reasons. Military doctrine for an invasion, he says, is usually "to go for overwhelming force". While Russia had massed between 150,000 and 190,000 troops on the border, so far it hasn't used them all.

That might be because Russia will need them for later phases of the invasion. It's normal for militaries to keep reserves as they adjust plans.

Western officials estimate that the initial assault involved about half of the forces it's massed. The initial invasion has been further complicated by attacks from multiple directions.

Russia also hasn't used its artillery and air strikes as intensively as expected. But Mr Arnold adds: "A key point is that they are facing very stiff Ukrainian resistance, which I don't think they expected."

Holding back on their air, rocket and cruise missile attacks and hoping for a fait accompli by overwhelming the government in Kiev on the first night may have been hoped to limit economic sanctions.  So now that this has not occured, Putin will point fingers at the West, most especially the US and Poland for supplying weaponry that stopped his armies.  He will probably demand that more troops be called up and sent to take his obsession.  How this is answered will be up to his oligarchs but they have been made his accomplices in the televised 'kabuke' q&a.  Hopefully, Putin will not be able to survive politically.  Protests continue in Russia even if in silence and without banners. 

[solops]

The Russian attack looks like a well thought out but incomplete staff exercise by folks with limited experience in actual field exercises, leading to a well organized, fizzled cluster-f---.. I also get the impression that the units used included lots of green troops brought in from all over which were not part of larger formations (corps, armies) that had exercised together before in the field. Does anyone know? I suspect that the Russkies need a a bit of a learning, evaluation and shakedown period which will be rapidly followed by a Russian hammer hitting a Ukrainian nail. There may be a brief window during which the Ukranians can be resupplied with sufficient AT and AA weapons to make the Russians hurt really bad when they finally get their act together. The worst thing the Russians can do (casualty-wise)is to push the attack before they fire a bunch of people and reorganize. However, my reading of the situation is that politics and Putin are going to force them to attack prematurely, leading to a really impressive body count.

[ComradeP]

Many countries Europe depend heavily on natural gas from Russia, particularly in Eastern Europe but also Germany which gets about 55% of its natural gas from Russia. If Putin decides to cut the supply, it will hurt Russia but it will also really hurt in other European countries. Medvedev has also threatened with nationalization of US/EU assets. That will make some energy/oil companies nervous as well.

We're already paying for the war, more or less, as the price went from 0,10-0,30 (before taxes) euro's per cubic metre a few years ago to well over 1 euro. Russia has also gradually decreased deliveries, increasing prices. Suppliers in the US and Middle East have long term contracts with many Asian countries and LNG tankers mostly arrive when the price is high. Those can't compensate for reduced deliveries from Russia.

The Groningen gas field in the Netherlands, the largest natural gas field in Europe, is supplying only a small amount of what it previously supplied as natural gas extraction was decreased after public pressure due to earthquakes in the province. Increasing gas extraction would pretty much be political suicide for the recently formed government around PM Mark Rutte's fourth term.

Winter is nearly over and it didn't amount to much in Europe, but prolonged sanctions and associated reduced gas deliveries from Russia will probably make some countries back down on their support for sanctions as they need to fill up reserves for next winter. Once more, the EU is likely to show how divided it can be.

[ComradeP]

Enemy casualty figure update according to the Ukrainian MOD:

4300 Russian soldiers (dead/wounded/missing, unclear if it includes captured).
150 tanks.
700 AFV's and other vehicles.

Enemy casualty figure update from Russian MOD:

471 Ukrainian troops captured.
975 "military targets" have been destroyed since Thursday morning.
36 aircraft destroyed, of which 28 were destroyed on the ground.
7 helicopters.
11 drones.

As always, take every figure with a grain of salt.

-

In other news, President Lukashenko of Belarus has admitted that (cruise) missiles were fired at Ukraine from Belarussian territory.

Earlier today, Ukrainian officials reported one missile, launched by a "Tu-22", was intercepted and destroyed.

The Tu-22 is no longer in service, so this might refer to a Tu-22M.

[GDS_Starfury]

and the EU has closed off its airspace to all russian airliners, some russian banks are now kicked out of Swift and Germany is going ahead with a $100 billion euro boost to its defense spending.

good job putin! you fucking moron.

go fuck yourself!

[GDS_Starfury]

[MengJiao]

Really have to wonder what Putin's endgame is.

   As implied in the discussions here (Solops! for example), he needs a new endgame since clearly plan A didn't work (whatever it was exactly) and he had no plan B.  I think plan A
was a quick grab of territory and killing Zelensky.  It was essentially a purely political plan: 1) forestall NATO 2) get troops into the Ukraine 3) get a friendly regime installed (as in Belarus, which
I guess is the model for what Putin wants) and presto!  No more problem.  But was there really a problem to begin with?  This is where Putin's Plan A began to fail as in way back in 2014.
If only part of the Ukraine could be "legitimately" seized in 2014, didn't that imply that the rest of the Ukraine was legitimate?  Hence the "insane" rhetoric -- Putin may be a little bit nuts, but
his real problem is having legitimized whatever he didn't seize in 2014.  In effect, he had created his own monster and the model for fixing that was Belarus, ie get a friendly regime led by a crony
not a comedian.
  So why the attack on all fronts?  Why not just kill Zelensky with a cruise missile or two?
  Because Putin figured the Ukrainian army would either not fight or just needed an excuse to surrender.  Unfortunately what this implied was that everyone could read Putin's mind in some really
precise way that his rhetoric obscured and that his misreading of the situation (Ukraine = Belarus) made difficult...or I should say, that his mistaking of the aim (Ukraine = Belarus)
for the present situation made hard to comprehend.
   This all goes back to the legitimacy of the regime in the Ukraine -- which Putin had legitimized in 2014 by stopping with the excuse of the breakaway whatevers.
    Note that Putin first recognized those as legitimate and then attacked the rest of the Ukraine.  In his mind (though not elsewhere) those were linked.
   I think all the guff about Putin's larger aims miss the point that all he wanted was a simple shift wherein Ukraine would be another Belarus.  Everything else is an attempt to
cover the fact that he legitimized the Ukraine himself in 2014.

   Back to the army.  The surrender of the Ukrainian army would legitimize his view of the Ukraine as an improved version of things in Belarus.

   Okay, back to Plan A: whatever the details, the army more or less goes along with turning the Ukraine into an improved Belarus.  Does this happen?  No.  This is the assumption that failed ie, the Ukrainian army started shooting back.  there was no "token" defense at the border.  The Ukrainians let the Russian columns enter and then destroyed them.  From that moment on, plan A was doomed and there
was no plan B at all.

    Now, of course, eventually I assume plan B would be to mount an actual war and destroy the Ukrainian army and no doubt a lot of other things and people in the Ukraine.  So far one of the
benefits of Plan A for the Ukraine is that since the Ukrainian army was supposed to go the way of the Belarusian army, there was no point in mounting a serious attack -- it would be enough to
seize some airports and kill Zelensky.  The Ukrainian Army would become more or less Belarusian and just a few thousand supporters of the regime would need to be located and murdered.

  Note also that plan A 2.0 features "talks" in Belarus.  Going to "talk" in Belarus would be equivalent to having the regime surrender and leave the army out of the loop.  Talking anywhere but
Belarus would legitimize the Ukrainian regime and cause plan A to finally go away...though plan B is likely to lead to a massive war, NATO intervention and maybe some nukes here and there.

[GDS_Starfury]

one of his many mistakes was thinking 2022 russia was 1982 soviet union

[GDS_Starfury]

if some form of this bullshit had tried attacking into NATO proper in 1988.... ::)
Red Storm Rising then becomes a worst case scenario. 

[GDS_Starfury]

reports that putin puts nuclear deterrence force on alert.....  are you fucking kidding me!

[MengJiao]

reports that putin puts nuclear deterrence force on alert.....  are you fucking kidding me!

  Once we are in Putin's Plan B, casualties are going to be immense.  The Ukrainian army will be rolled over pretty fast, which will trigger some kind of NATO re-action that
Putin finds disturbing and World War III will be happening, probably in slow motion, but the endgame is likely feature some nukes since Russia isn't going to easily accept being
a fourth-class power and kicked out of the UN security council in favor of India.

[GDS_Starfury]

great... so the world has to hope for some Clancyesque (sp) last minute internal coup?
fanfuckingtastic

[ComradeP]

I don't think it will become "world war 3", as outside of Europe and NATO member states other countries have no ability or reason to intervene in any upcoming escalation.

The exception would be China, should it think it would be a good time to make a move on Taiwan.

However, a world war requires most of the countries in the world to be at war and fighting across the world and after decolonization that is an unlikely event.

-

It's curious that even though nuclear weapons have become more and more lethal with each generation, the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons waiting for someone to push the button doesn't cause alarm in the general public like it did during the Cold War. Putin might be the first to show just how naive that was.

-

The performance of the Russian army is surprisingly poor. Though I understand why you could point to logistics, they're still operating within 100-200 kilometres of the Russian border against an enemy with little to no means of interdicting movements in Russia. It's hard to tell if Russian vehicles running out of fuel are isolated incidents, perhaps caused by moving beyond the initial objectives, or mismanagement of logistics.

[solops]

one of his many mistakes was thinking 2022 russia was 1982 soviet union

+1

[MengJiao]

great... so the world has to hope for some Clancyesque (sp) last minute internal coup?
fanfuckingtastic

  Well...maybe Belarus will provide some kind of answer soon.  There were independent talks between Belarus and Zelensky.  If Zelensky will play ball (to use the proper
US gangster slang) then this whole thing could be reduced to making sure Zelensky can act like a crony.  He is an actor and playing a crony is not a hard role...you just have
to be more of a "character actor"...AND Zelensky is sending a delegation to talk AT THE BORDER of Belarus.  Clearly he gets the message (as in Plan B might be the end of the
world so get your crony act together) and maybe he can play ball well enough to satisfy everybody (and leave NATO way out in the cold...not a high price to pay for anybody at this
point relative to the END OF THE WORLD).  That would be nice.  Putin just has to shift his priorities a tiny bit and accept the comedian as a crony.