Russia's War Against Ukraine

[ComradeP]

Train moving into Kherson: https://twitter.com/i/status/1501545844457283585

[MengJiao]

Train moving into Kherson: https://twitter.com/i/status/1501545844457283585

An attempt at comprehending the Russian plan in southern Ukraine: 

   https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/07/europe/russia-southern-ukraine-military-analysis-intl/index.html

Which starts:

Each morning I hope it will be easier to process. But nearly a fortnight into this war, the conflict still seems surreally distant and alarmingly beyond comprehension.

Try to ask yourself "how is this happening?" and you lurch out over an abyss so profound it is beyond the reach of your senses.
And even if Putin does think he can get his old empire back, how do these 13 days of savagery make that happen?
The slow and clumsy Russian campaign for the south has been the most baffling. It is clear what Moscow wants: To cut off Ukraine's access to the Black Sea.
What is hard to fathom is whether the Kremlin's plan to get it has collapsed, and Russian troops are just throwing rockets and tanks at anything they can,
or whether this sort of total war against Ukrainians was always the plan.

And continues:

The city of Kherson was the first to "fall," but that was not really what happened.
As we watched the fight for the strategic bridge to the city's east, I tried to reassure locals that the Russian army had no interest in their homes and would drive on by, eager to get to Odessa,
further west.

But I was wrong -- again -- about the extent of Moscow's ambitions. (I have, since the first intelligence warnings about a full Russian invasion of Ukraine, felt the idea was so preposterous it must be born of an intelligence failure, not a historic intelligence success).

Russian troops did enter the city of Kherson, where they were reported to have looted shops, arrested men, and shot in the air at protestors.
The residents here call them "Orcs" -- the lumbering monsters from the Lord of the Rings.
It is a marvel that Moscow was either so convinced civil disobedience would not be a problem or decided that they simply did not need a plan to deal with it.
The Kremlin's attempt to film Russian aid trucks handing out the solution to the problem its invasion created was greeted with local scorn and profanity. The protests go on.

[ComradeP]

The Russian army is and has been primarily a blunt instrument.

Contrary to NATO, precision guided munitions are rare. On the other hand, destructive area attack weapons are common and have only increased their potency in recent years (compare that to the trend towards less area attack weapons like the MLRS and similar weapons in the various NATO armies).

Unfortunately for the civilians living in the cities held by the Ukrainian army, the Russian army doesn't really have the means to remove the Ukrainians in a subtle manner.

NATO's performance in urban combat wouldn't necessarily be much better against an opponent with modern weapons. You can't simply roll into a city with modern concrete buildings and a million inhabitants and hope to take it from the march. Urban combat remains an ugly business, and the smaller size of modern armies combined with larger cities make it even more difficult than it was in, say, WWII.

The Russians seem to be trying to secure a number of strategic objectives all at once, instead of focussing on one or two. Considering that the Russians quickly crossed the Dnieper, progress has been very limited.

From a strategic perspective, the fighting near Mariupoel doesn't make much sense. Though linking up the Crimea with the separatist regions is helpful, it won't make much of an impact on the war as a whole. It's been diverting forces from both the advances from the Donbas and the Crimea in a direction away from strategic objectives west of the Dnieper.

A stronger concentration crossing the Dnieper advancing both along the Southern Bug and towards, say, Krivoy Rog with a screening force towards the cities of Zaporzhye and Dnipro would, combined with the on-going battle for Kiev, threaten all Ukrainian forces east of the river.

Forcing the Ukrainians to withdraw across larger distances would also create a richer target environment for missiles and the air force as columns move back along highways.

The Russians insist on attacking the Ukrainians where they are strongest, indeed repeating the same attacks over and over like the article you linked to mentions.

[W8taminute]

Yeah I can't believe how slow the Russians have been advancing.  It's almost as if they have forgotten how to wage a proper war. 

[FlickJax]

The Russian army is and has been primarily a blunt instrument.

Contrary to NATO, precision guided munitions are rare. On the other hand, destructive area attack weapons are common and have only increased their potency in recent years (compare that to the trend towards less area attack weapons like the MLRS and similar weapons in the various NATO armies).

Unfortunately for the civilians living in the cities held by the Ukrainian army, the Russian army doesn't really have the means to remove the Ukrainians in a subtle manner.

NATO's performance in urban combat wouldn't necessarily be much better against an opponent with modern weapons. You can't simply roll into a city with modern concrete buildings and a million inhabitants and hope to take it from the march. Urban combat remains an ugly business, and the smaller size of modern armies combined with larger cities make it even more difficult than it was in, say, WWII.

The Russians seem to be trying to secure a number of strategic objectives all at once, instead of focussing on one or two. Considering that the Russians quickly crossed the Dnieper, progress has been very limited.

From a strategic perspective, the fighting near Mariupoel doesn't make much sense. Though linking up the Crimea with the separatist regions is helpful, it won't make much of an impact on the war as a whole. It's been diverting forces from both the advances from the Donbas and the Crimea in a direction away from strategic objectives west of the Dnieper.

A stronger concentration crossing the Dnieper advancing both along the Southern Bug and towards, say, Krivoy Rog with a screening force towards the cities of Zaporzhye and Dnipro would, combined with the on-going battle for Kiev, threaten all Ukrainian forces east of the river.

Forcing the Ukrainians to withdraw across larger distances would also create a richer target environment for missiles and the air force as columns move back along highways.

The Russians insist on attacking the Ukrainians where they are strongest, indeed repeating the same attacks over and over like the article you linked to mentions.

He probably wants a land bridge to the Crimea which he will look to keep in any peace negotiations

[ComradeP]

That's a fairly logical strategic objective, but the Russian army is trying to accomplish it by headbutting its way from the Crimea to the Russian border west of Taganrog.

A concentration of forces west of the Dnieper would, strategically, force the Ukrainians to pull back. As there are not that many bridges across the Dnieper, a Ukrainian retreat could quickly turn into a rout if the Russians win the race to the river, heading north-north-east from Kherson.

Currently, the Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper are still exposed due to the nature of their deployment, but not directly being threatened with encirclement. That the Ukrainian line is seemingly facing so little pressure that the Ukrainian army could actually afford to fight for Mariupoel (which has a very limited strategic significance by itself, the Sea of Azov is already pretty much a Russian lake since the annexation of the Crimea) is a sign of Russian strategic misjudgement and improper use of forces all by itself.

None of the Russian pushes seems to have the "weight" to remove the Ukrainian army. I didn't expect the Ukrainians to be able to hold in the vast open spaces south-east of Kharkov, but even that seems to be going fairly well.

[MengJiao]

That's a fairly logical strategic objective, but the Russian army is trying to accomplish it by headbutting its way from the Crimea to the Russian border west of Taganrog.

A concentration of forces west of the Dnieper would, strategically, force the Ukrainians to pull back. As there are not that many bridges across the Dnieper, a Ukrainian retreat could quickly turn into a rout if the Russians win the race to the river, heading north-north-east from Kherson.

Currently, the Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper are still exposed due to the nature of their deployment, but not directly being threatened with encirclement. That the Ukrainian line is seemingly facing so little pressure that the Ukrainian army could actually afford to fight for Mariupoel (which has a very limited strategic significance by itself, the Sea of Azov is already pretty much a Russian lake since the annexation of the Crimea) is a sign of Russian strategic misjudgement and improper use of forces all by itself.

None of the Russian pushes seems to have the "weight" to remove the Ukrainian army. I didn't expect the Ukrainians to be able to hold in the vast open spaces south-east of Kharkov, but even that seems to be going fairly well.

From CNN, results of the meeting in Turkey (and it seems to me the Russians have only a few more days to get realistic and get a good deal before the Ukrainians give up on dealing with them and
resolve to fight to the bitter end -- which might take a while and cause immense destruction)

Of course, the basic problem is that the Russians have trapped themselves by not allowing any mechanisms for guaranteeing long-term stability in the region.  The Turks obviously see this quite clearly.



  This poses a question," said Kuleba. "How to assure the security of Ukraine between now and eventual membership in NATO."
Kuleba added: "If we could reach an agreement where a similar system of guarantees as envisaged by the North Atlantic Charter could be granted to Ukraine by the permanent members of UN Security Council, including Russia," as well as by Ukraine's neighbors, "this is something we are ready to discuss. Ukraine exists in a security vacuum and we have to think creatively on how to address this issue."

Kuleba's meeting with Lavrov on Thursday ended without an agreement between the two sides on evacuation corridors out of besieged areas, nor on a ceasefire in Ukraine.

After the meeting, Kuleba said Russia was not prepared to negotiate on his top goals of arranging an evacuation route away from the city of Mariupol, which has endured deadly airstrikes this week.

According to Kuleba, a "broad narrative Lavrov conveyed today was they [Russia] will continue their aggression until we surrender." He said he hopes Lavrov will follow up on the humanitarian issues in Ukraine by "reaching out to his colleagues in charge who can make decisions."

[Gusington]

^The Russian response to that first Turkish comment would be 'perhaps you have not been paying attention to our top priority here.'

[JasonPratt]

Star's joke about Glantz' book was not only spot-on, but inspired me to dig around for the best deal on it. (Can't recall if I have it already somewhere. Too many books, too little life...)

Amazon looks like the least costly eBook version at the moment, at $14.90. How well DG's work converts over to that format is a whole other question.

The paperback lists at $62.95, but Amazon again seems to have the best discount, at $53.88. Walmart has the same discount.

[MengJiao]

^The Russian response to that first Turkish comment would be 'perhaps you have not been paying attention to our top priority here.'

  That's the Ukrainian foreign minister's comment.  It's actually kind of pointless in fact for the Russians to insist NATO is the problem when Turkey, a NATO member, is likely to
be the only way some kind of end to this war can be arranged soon with some kind of satisfaction for Russia.

[JasonPratt]

Meanwhile, I can't recall now where I heard or read the analysis, but someone earlier this week with DoD contacts was talking about how Putin doesn't have enough invasion-level supplies built up to keep going for more than three weeks. (Might have been that Oxford interview? Haven't been able to get back to that yet...)

I guess we'll soon see; but I know of at least one key example (the Nazis in Barbarossa) who hit their predicted logistic wall at three weeks, and managed to keep on going for a while. On the other hand, they barely managed to finish off Poland's encirclement invasion after hitting that three-week wall -- albeit with a lot less preparation possible in their backfield.

Putin's scurvy low-class troop composition looks more like the latter at the moment than the former, but he's still holding a lot of his trump cards in his hand.


At this point, looking at it purely from an efficiency perspective, I have to wonder if Putin would have been better off driving one or (a la Montgomery) two close prongs (near enough for some interior line reinforcements to help each other), in a strong thrust into and past a few key targets. I remember being very surprised on the opening day that he tried a full operational envelopment.

[MengJiao]

^The Russian response to that first Turkish comment would be 'perhaps you have not been paying attention to our top priority here.'

  That's the Ukrainian foreign minister's comment.  It's actually kind of pointless in fact for the Russians to insist NATO is the problem when Turkey, a NATO member, is likely to
be the only way some kind of end to this war can be arranged soon with some kind of satisfaction for Russia.

   lukashenko is going to Moscow to talk to Putin tomorrow.  We all know what the content of that conversation will be:

Putin:  "I'm sorry, lubby, can I call you Lubby?"
Lubby: "No."
Putin: "Anyway Lubby, When you get back to Belarus...uh...this is going to sound bad but it isn't..."
Lubby: "What?"
Putin: "uh...when you get back to Belarus, I'm going to drop a bomb on you."
Lubby: "Ha!  You are the funny man."
Putin: "No, I'm serious and this is a very serious bomb.  A thermonuclear bomb.  2-3 megatons so be somewhere quiet where you can reflect on your life or something."
Lubby:  "What?  Why me?"
Putin: "We will say NATO dropped a bomb on you.  Almost an accident.  Almost an afterthought.  Barely lethal, really.  Just the fireball.  That's what they call it.  You won't feel a thing.
  I think you will be ionized in ...smallest time."
Lubby:  "No, I'm staying in Moscow."
Putin: "It has to look like a little accident that NATO had with the bomb.  They missed.  They were trying some new thing and it hit you.  You see why they are the bad guys."
Lubby: "why me?"
Putin: "I have to be very very upset.  I won't miss anyone as much as you."

Well...maybe Lubby will get out of this one...but who knows:

[ArizonaTank]

Just saw some mind-blowing drone video of a Russian company+ sized mech force (including tanks), taking incoming while caught in a choke point on the road. The unit is in a clusterf$$k on the road. Like watching something out of one of the CM games where the player starts whining about dumb AI...except this is not AI, it is deadly and real.

CNN had some additional footage, (that I can't seem to find now) of the burning vehicles at ground level.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/destruction-of-tanks-on-the-outskirts-of-brovary-ukraine/vi-AAUSgWA?ocid=msedgntp

[MengJiao]

Just saw some mind-blowing drone video of a Russian company+ sized mech force (including tanks), taking incoming while caught in a choke point on the road. The unit is in a clusterf$$k on the road. Like watching something out of one of the CM games where the player starts whining about dumb AI...except this is not AI, it is deadly and real.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/destruction-of-tanks-on-the-outskirts-of-brovary-ukraine/vi-AAUSgWA?ocid=msedgntp

  How did they get that (from a drone?) and I swear it looked like infantry were running in among the tanks and blowing them up.  Tanks where shooting at them it looked like.  Quite horrifying!
Yeah, I saw the CNN footage as well.

[W8taminute]

So this is all very interesting...


https://rumble.com/vwxfgf-russia-tells-the-us-we-have-found-your-biological-weapons.html

https://twitter.com/MFA_China/status/1501185437901082629